Altruism
by Nat Roze
Summary: Tsuna sends the recently-freed Mukuro to live with Hibari in hopes that he'll teach the Cloud Guardian how to be more social. Instead, Mukuro teaches Hibari how not to be lonely. 1869 or 6918, Hibari/Mukuro. might rewrite and repost, as well as cross-post to AO3? but i dont know yet
1. Attention

Yes, I know I have something else I should be working on, but plot bunnies strike at the strangest times and in the strangest ways. By which I mean _only during english class._

Either way, I felt the need to start this story too, which may or may not be shorter than what I'm pretending I have planned for Mistakes Will Be Made (because I'm totally pulling that out of my ass as I go). This is also an exercise writing present tense instead of past tense. Point of view will probably switch between Mukuro and Hibari from chapter to chapter.

Warnings: Yaoi/BL/Shonen-ai/slash/whatever you call it, language

Disclaimer: I'm not Amano Akira, but if I could just get my hands on that posession bullet...

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><p>Altruism<p>

1: Attention

It is cold outside the human-sized tank when they finally let Mukuro out, but it's far earlier than he expected to be released and so he's trying to cope with it. It's been something like a year since he was stuck back in there after escaping, and Sawada Tsunayoshi has finally come to terms with the fact that you can't exactly change who you're related to and succumbed to his fate as the boss of the Vongola famiglia. That was fine with Mukuro; it made his plans to bring the mafia world crashing down around itself that much easier. Either way, Tsunayoshi wants both his Mist Guardians free and ready to fight in case of an emergency, as if anyone's stupid enough to challenge the Vongola after the last incident. Daemon Spade was a fucking asshole, and Mukuro had really put the bastard in his place, now hadn't he.

He's not sure exactly why he hasn't simply stabbed Tsunayoshi and taken him over just yet, but perhaps it's something to do with the fact that the kid's just simply that charismatic and sweet. Not many people would overlook the fact that you'd tried to murder them the last time you'd met in person. Not many people would forgive you nearly killing several of their friends.

Mukuro supposes that if he is being forced to associate with the mafia, at least it's Tsunayoshi's mafia, and their boss is an honestly good guy. Mukuro can't imagine Tsuna allowing experiments like the ones performed on Mukuro in his childhood to go on, not in a million years.

Mukuro shudders, and it's not because he's cold this time.

"Mukuro," Tsunayoshi starts awkwardly on the airplane back to Japan. The illusionist gives him a confused look. "I, um. Because you're part of the famiglia now, Joshima Ken and Kakimoto Chikusa wanted to follow you… um."

"Get to the point," Mukuro encourages.

"The Varia think they have potential, and want to know if they can, er… well, I believe the word Belphegor used was 'borrow,' but I don't quite think it's what he meant."

Mukuro laughs. "If those two fools can keep up with the Varia, the Varia can have them. Let them do what they want."

"Okay. Aw, crap. That means I have to call Squalo when we get off the plane… I really don't want to do that."

Mukuro stares into space for a moment. It's been a while since he's been on an airplane. The flight attendants keep giving him strange looks because his hair's still damp from the tank he was kept in and he's wearing a pair of jeans borrowed from Gokudera Hayato and an oversized t-shirt belonging to Tsuna that the boy has yet to grow into himself, and he looks and feels very out of place.

"How's Chrome?" he asks, attempting conversation. It feels strange to use his voice after so long speaking through someone else's mind.

"She's doing well. She's been staying with Kyoko-chan and Ryohei-oniisan this past week, actually. Sun Guardian and his sister," Tsuna explains, seeing Mukuro's blank stare as he attempts to recall where he's heard the name Ryohei before. "She's planning on transferring into Namimori Middle."

"What year?"

"Second. I'm going to be in third with Yamamoto and Gokudera-kun, and Ryohei-oniisan and Hibari-san are going to be starting their first year at Nami High school. Um, on that note, Mukuro…"

"Yes?"

"Would you be willing to attend Namimori High?" Tsuna asks.

Mukuro is taken slightly aback by this request. Mostly because he cannot fathom why it's being made to begin with.

"It's mostly so all the Vongola Guardians are in the same place, we can communicate easily, get used to each other better… there's a lot of factors, actually. But for you, wouldn't it really be your first actual academic experience? You know, since you've sorta been… well, in prison. And worse. You know what I mean."

Mukuro does know what he means. He tries not to think about what he means by _and worse_. He knows what Tsunayoshi means by his first actual academic experience. That doesn't mean he knows what he thinks about it.

Eventually, the idea of forcing Hibari Kyouya to attend classes with him makes him smile inwardly as he imagines sitting at a desk behind the prefect, flicking notes with suggestive, amusing things written on them at the back of his head and watching his reactions.

"I'll attend your school, sure," Mukuro agrees, shrugging. Maybe he'll go to class. Maybe he won't. If he doesn't, all he needs to do is send in an illusion, because the teacher won't be able to tell the difference anyway. If he doesn't, the head prefect of the disciplinary committee will come and threaten to bite him to death.

"Um, good," Tsuna nods. "Um, I'd offer that you can stay at my house, but Gokudera's sister and Lambo and I-Pin and Ranking Fuuta are already taking up all the extra space that I have…"

The plane lands and they file out to catch a cab back to Tsuna's house, still discussing where the hell Mukuro is going to live.

"I think Gokudera-kun still hates your guts," Tsuna continues. "And Yamamoto's dad already says he can't handle another kid. Um, the Sasagawas are already taking care of Chrome… that sort of leaves Hibari-san, and I can imagine you showing up at his house asking to live with him isn't really going to go over very well, but aside from maybe Irie Shouichi's place, which is completely out of the question, I can't imagine where else to send you. And you can't commute from Kokuyo every day…"

"Well, Kyouya-kun's just going to have to learn to live with me then," Mukuro grins, starting to get his strength back enough that he would feel comfortable wandering around on his own.

And then Tsunayoshi makes a face like he's just come up with a wonderful idea, and he voices this revelation of his to Mukuro. "Actually, that seems like it might be a good idea," he explains. "Go stay with Hibari-san. I'll come with you to convince him. You can teach him how to relate to other people without, say, killing them."

"And what do I get out of this? Besides living space," he adds.

"Um, Hibari-san will stop trying to murder you every time your name comes up?" Tsunayoshi guesses. Mukuro smiles, and they give the cabbie the new directions to Hibari Kyouya's house. They are dropped off some time later, and Tsunayoshi braces himself and takes a deep breath as he rings the doorbell.

Moments pass and then Hibari appears on the doorstep. It is late evening and he's wearing a yukata, for reasons Mukuro cannot fathom, because it's April, it's vaguely chilly, it's not a holiday, and Hibari lives in a perfectly normal house and the yukata, while very attractive on him, looks slightly out of place in a suburban neighborhood.

Hibari's about to say something along the lines of "get off my doorstep, herbivore" to Tsunayoshi when he realizes Mukuro's there too, and suddenly there's a tonfa to the illusionist's throat and he's being pressed easily up against the garden wall and Tsunayoshi is yelling at Hibari to calm down and be rational.

Mukuro decides that while he is recovering, he probably has a bit more recovering to do yet, because he finds it almost disturbing and definitely unnerving how easily he's been pinned down and how easily Hibari could push a _little_ harder and suddenly he wouldn't be breathing.

There is a long and drawn-out argument between Tsunayoshi and Hibari, in which Tsuna cowers in fear a lot and Hibari growls and Mukuro remains pinned to the wall with much less force that should usually pin him to a wall, but eventually Hibari concedes, if only for the reason that Mukuro can cook and for the most part, Hibari's diet consists of instant ramen, convenience-store sushi, and whatever the closest cheap restaurant serves on the weekends.

Tsunayoshi leaves awkwardly and Hibari stalks back inside.

"I'll lock you out if you don't hurry up, herbivore," he snaps, and Mukuro steadies himself and follows Hibari indoors. He politely shuts the door behind him and removes his shoes before standing up straight and trying not to look as pathetic as someone who's just been let out of prison, shoehorned onto an airplane and flown through several different time zones, is wearing strange, mismatched clothes, and somehow still manages to be _fucking dripping_.

Inside, the prefect's icy gray eyes bore into his own mismatched ones for a moment before he instructs Mukuro on the apparent rules of the household. "You do all the cooking because I can't cook without disasters occurring," he begins, not at all distressed by the fact that he's about as skilled in the kitchen as Bianchi, minus the poison-on-purpose. Mukuro nods. "You do your own laundry. Don't expect me to touch it." He nods again. "Don't make a mess. If you do, clean it up. If something's broken, fix it. If you can't fix it, report it. If it's not where it's supposed to be, put it back. If you don't know what to do with it, figure it out for yourself." Mukuro nods to each of these, because if he doesn't, Hibari's still got his tonfas out and Mukuro doesn't want to be on bedrest. "Don't wake me up. Don't bother me. Take a different route to school than I do; I don't want to be associated with you."

"That's sorta harsh, Kyouya-kun," Mukuro mumbles. He is given the Evil Eye and rapidly shuts up.

"If you break any of these rules, I'll bite you to death."

"Gotcha." Mukuro refrains from making a sexual comment.

"Your room is upstairs. Go take a bath," Hibari instructs.

"Since when are you my mother?" Mukuro mutters. "Speaking of which, Kyouya-kun, where are your parents? They won't mind me here, will they?"

"My parents works overseas," he says vaguely. Mukuro raises an eyebrow.

"You live alone?"

"Go take a bath." Hibari refuses to make eye contact, instead glaring at the floor.

"Isn't that lonely?"

"Go take a bath, herbivore. I'll kill you if you ever bring this up again."

Mukuro has a towel shoved into his arms and is directed down the hallway and into the bathroom. He locks the door behind himself, just out of habit, and runs the bath water as hot as it'll go, because the people tubes in Vindicare are fucking freezing, and Mukuro is almost positive they employ some jerkwad scum to walk between the tanks and dump a new bucket of ice cubes in every once and a while, because it's prison, prison for the worst of the worst of the worst of the mafia world, and prison just sorta sucks that way.

The water's probably close to boiling, but it feels great, and Mukuro is very conscious of the fact that it's Hibari's bathroom and Hibari's bathtub he's soaking in and now he lives here, at least until he can figure out how to get a job. And keep it for long enough to make money. And get his own apartment.

Because until then, he's Hibari's personal chef. And Tsuna lied about the cooking skills. True, he isn't quite as bad as Hibari, but most of what he knows how to make involves a microwave oven, some tofu, and soy sauce, or otherwise looks like it came off the menu of an Italian restaurant. A vague and amusing image floats through Mukuro's head, an image of Hibari attempting to eat spaghetti with a fork instead of chopsticks, and it's a total mess and the prefect looks like a fool, and Mukuro decides he's making spaghetti for dinner as soon as he can get his hands on some.

Upon getting out of the bath, Mukuro wraps the towel around his waist because he really doesn't want to put Gokudera's pants back on and makes his way down the hall. He only knows which room is his because the door's open and a piece of paper reading "Herbivore" has been thumbtacked to the door. Mukuro raises an eyebrow and stifles a giggle and enters the room.

It's small and sparsely decorated and looks like it may at some point have been used for storage, because Mukuro can see vague hints of dust where boxes of stuff have been lifted out of the way. Mukuro finds the boxes shoved unceremoniously in the closet.

There's a desk up against the wall next to the window and a futon stacked in the corner. On top of the futon, folded _conspicuously_ neatly, are a few pairs of pants and a few shirts, a set of pajamas and some socks and underwear and Mukuro can imagine Hibari wearing none of these things. It's clarified that this suspicion is true when Mukuro realizes there's a post-it note on top of the stack of pants. It reads, _my mother sends me these from overseas; I don't like them and don't wear them. Go give Gokudera Hayato his pants back._

Mukuro smiles at this, because Hibari doesn't realize it but he's being rather caring here, and it seems very strange and out-of-character to Mukuro, but perhaps there's a reason behind it all.

Mukuro pulls on a pair of boxers (he wonders idly if Hibari's telling the truth about never having worn them and blushes slightly)and dons the pajamas, black and flannel and comfy. He leaves the room, giving a vague glance at the sunset out the window, and goes downstairs.

Hibari is in the kitchen with a cup of tea and a math book.

"Doing homework?" Mukuro asks.

Hibari makes a noncommittal "Hn" noise and otherwise ignores Mukuro's existence.

"Thanks for the clothes."

"Hn."

"Nice to see you again too, Mukuro," Mukuro snarks, "It's great to see you out of prison. Maybe we can have a sparring match in the morning. I missed you too."

"You're blocking the light," Hibari says blandly, gesturing vaguely at the kitchen window where the last rays of daylight are streaming in. Mukuro glances half-interestedly at this and then turns to say something to Hibari, but his voice catches in his throat because it's been a long time since he's seen the citrus-orange light of a sunset playing across someone's skin, seen the almost harsh highlights it throws in their hair, the dazzling sparkles it brings out in their eyes and the deep, black shadows it casts behind them, copying their form in a silhouette on the wall.

Hibari is beautiful in this light, and Mukuro is suddenly very conscious of the fact that he's being stared at in return by the Namimori prefect.

"Move," he says, and then repeats, "You're blocking the light."

"Turn on a lamp then," Mukuro retorts, composing himself quickly and looking conspicuously in the other direction.

"You're closer to the switch, herbivore."

Mukuro raises and eyebrow, grins, and moves to lean up against the wall _right_ next to the light switch. "You're the one that wants light to work by, Kyouya-kun. Turn the lights on yourself."

Hibari glares not daggers, but large, recently sharpened broadswords at him.

Mukuro smiles like a child coloring beautiful crayon pictures of rainbows on the nice, clean, white walls of their parents' boss's house.

Mukuro continues refusing to turn on the lights and Hibari persists in ignoring his existence entirely. The sun sets slowly, but eventually the last rays of amber light are creeping through the window, and most of the kitchen has gone dark, and Hibari looks up from his math, closes the textbook, and stands.

On his way out of the room, he whacks Mukuro soundly over the head with the book, and silently vanishes down the hall.

Mukuro sighs and decides to raid Hibari's fridge while the prefect isn't looking, because he's hungry and has nothing better to do. He makes himself cup noodles, because that and convenience store onigiri are all that's in the fridge at the moment, and goes through every freaking drawer in the kitchen before he manages to find chopsticks, meticulously organized by color, and he wonders to himself exactly how OCD Hibari is.

He eats his cup noodles in silence and leaves the empty Styrofoam container on the counter because he's not sure where the trash can is, and makes his way upstairs to go to bed, because what with the airplane and the freedom and the actually moving around instead of floating in a tube 24-7, he's very, very tired.

Mukuro falls asleep staring at the ceiling and hoping to whatever might be up there in the sky that Hibari won't try to murder him in his sleep.

He has a sinking suspicion, as his eyes slide shut and he drifts into dreamland, that whatever might be up there in the sky is having a good laugh at his expense right now.

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><p>Listening to some really awesome Spanish music right now. I think I understand about as much Spanish as the average housecat (okay, maybe the average Spanish housecat), but it's still epic and win.<p>

Review if you like. I don't care one way or another, but I'd like to know if I should actually continue with this or not.

Cheers;

Forte


	2. Annoyance

I really love writing from Hibari's point of view. It's fun to wonder what he thinks about all the time.

I'm sort of going on the suspicion that Hibari's parents have absolutely no interest in their son's life and have generally assumed he's responsible enough to remember to eat every day and do his schoolwork without being asked. I don't know what they're actually like in canon because they sorta haven't even been mentioned... so everything about his family is speculation.

Disclaimer: Nope. Still not Amano Akira.

Warnings: shonen-ai, language

Enjoy.

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><p>2: Annoyance<p>

Hibari awakes with the distinct feeling that he ought to be remembering something, and it's something damn important too! He sorts through his thoughts for a brief moment of time and categorizes them based on what he thinks he's supposed to be remembering. It's Sunday, so no school. He's done his homework. He did the laundry. He locked the door before he went to sleep (a habit he got into years and years ago, which is generally unneeded, because even if someone were stupid enough to break into Hibari's house, it would be highly unlikely they'd ever repeat the experience).

Hibari gets up and gets dressed in an outfit that looks remarkably like his school uniform and makes his way downstairs.

He smells food, thinks to himself_ don't I live alone_?

And then, his eyes narrowing into an infuriated glare, he remembers.

Rokudo Mukuro is in his kitchen flipping pancakes. Hibari can only assume the other boy went to the market or something, because Hibari can't remember ever buying pancake ingredients in his life. The illusionist shows no indication that he's noticed Hibari's presence in the room until Hibari jabs him in the side with the butter knife and Mukuro whines angrily at him.

"Kyouya-kun, d'you want breakfast or not? Don't kill me," he complains. "Especially not with _that_, it's not sharp enough. I thought you wanted to bite me to death anyway." He points the spatula at Hibari with a grin. "Do you want chocolate chips in your pancake?" he asks nonchalantly.

"Too sweet," Hibari says by means of an answer, and pours himself a glass of milk. He purposefully neglects to pour one for Mukuro.

"Blueberries?" asks the illusionist.

"No."

"Anything?"

"Blood," Hibari suggests sarcastically. Mukuro laughs his typical laugh and mumbles something along the lines of _oh, of course, how could I have forgotten to buy that ingredient_ and Hibari sighs to himself, thinking that Mukuro's corpse is going to be fertilizing his yard by the end of the day, because there's no way he can pretend he doesn't want to _murder_ the bastard for everything he did in the past.

"You should probably call your parents and tell them I'm living with you," Mukuro suggests as he places a stack of pancakes on a plate in front of Hibari.

"I thought I said not to ever bring that up again," Hibari growls, stabbing at Mukuro with his chopsticks before realizing it's going to be a problem to try and eat pancakes with them. "Go get me a fork, herbivore."

"I'm your roommate, not your maid," Mukuro retorts, getting him a fork anyway. "Why don't you want to talk about your family, Kyouya-kun? I don't exactly _have_ a family; I wouldn't know about it if there were a reason not to talk."

"They aren't here. I don't care what they do and they don't know what I do. I don't worry about it. They do their jobs, I live alone. End of story," Hibari snaps.

Mukuro sits down across from him at the table with a slightly wary look, and Hibari thinks to himself that it really _isn't_ the end of the story, because if his parents knew what he got up to on a daily basis, they would start interfering in his life. And he doesn't want that, because then they'd come back and live with him again and it would be irritating, especially the bit where he would have to explain Mukuro.

But on the other hand, he wouldn't be living alone any more.

Not that he currently _is_. The direct contradiction to that statement is sitting across the table from him, inquiring as to why he hasn't tried the pancakes yet.

Hibari takes a bite of pancake and hopes Mukuro's had the common decency not to poison them. Surprisingly, they're tolerably sweet and, well, Hibari will never admit it out loud, but they're pretty darn good as pancakes go.

"Sub-par," he lies instead, and takes another bite. "But better than the cheap restaurant down the street," he admits, and Mukuro smirks.

"Guess the secret ingredient," he teases, and Hibari stops chewing abruptly.

"Herbivore, if you put something weird in here I'll save myself the trouble of going and getting my tonfas and just take you out with a kitchen knife."

"I'm kidding. I just used powdered sugar instead of normal sugar."

Hibari, who doesn't cook unless he wants to burn the house down, marvels silently at the concept of more than one type of sugar, and thinks to himself that _isn't sugar a powder anyway?_

"Oh," Hibari says, as if he knows what Mukuro was talking about. It almost pisses him off that he doesn't, but he reminds himself that as long as Mukuro's living there, cooking is immaterial to him. In fact, cooking is immaterial to him anyway, because that's what convenience stores sell onigiri for, now isn't it? And why else did they invent restaurants?

Hibari finishes his food and clears his plate and turns around and says, "Herbivore, quit staring at me."

Mukuro blinks startledly and stares at Hibari anyway. "I didn't realize I was," he admits, and Hibari's positive he must be lying, because it's Rokudo Mukuro and he's an illusionist and lying is just what he does.

"You haven't stopped staring," Hibari growls.

Mukuro smirks and shuts his eyes. Hibari tries not to yell at him, because if he does yell, it's going to be loud, loud to the extent that Sawada will hear it all the way across town and come over to tell Hibari off for being a bad host, and isn't he supposed to be trying to get along with Mukuro, and all sorts of other things that Sawada likes to go on about.

"I'm going out," Hibari informs his freeloader. "If you follow me, I'll bite you to death."

Mukuro doesn't move from the table, because he is still eating, but Hibari can feel the illusionist's eyes on him until he leaves the room.

It is April and the cherry blossoms are blooming, and despite the stupid fucking sakura disease that he still needs to bite that pervert to death for, Hibari is fully intent on enjoying a nice, long walk that will preferably take him all day, or at least somewhere far away from Mukuro.

_This must be a test of my patience_, he decides. It isn't that Sawada just needs a place for Mukuro to live; he's challenging his Cloud Guardian as well. Seeing how long it takes before Hibari tries to violently murder his new roommate. Hibari decides that he's not going to let himself be so easily predicted by a weakling herbivore like Sawada, pretends he doesn't want to rip out Mukuro's throat already, and resolves to beat the Vongola boss at his own game.

The school counselor he used to see in preschool (before all other school counselors started fearing for their lives in his presence) had told him that if he was angry, he was supposed to use his words to tell a person why he was angry with him. These words usually amounted to "You're crowding" or "You annoy me" and the preschool counselor eventually gave up and made Hibari stay inside for recess. Hibari was now wondering if he should try this method again. Instead of beating Mukuro's brains in with his tonfas, maybe he should try explaining in words to the Mist Guardian _exactly how fucking angry he was and why_.

As he walks down the street, unconsciously taking the path to Nami Middle and reminding himself sullenly that it isn't his school anymore, that he is in the high school now (and it wouldn't be long before he had all of them cowering before him too, seniority be damned), he imagines how that conversation with Mukuro would go.

_Rokudo Mukuro, I've been told that instead of brutally destroying you, we should talk out our issues. This is why I cannot stand nor fathom your presence: You humiliated me, manipulated me, nearly killed me, nearly destroyed my pride, and did all this while hiding behind your stupid illusions instead of fighting me like a real man. Oh, and also, you're a cynical bastard with a twisted sense of humor. Me in pain is not funny. Don't laugh at it. I'll bite you to death-_

And from there the mental run-through of the conversation becomes a mental choreographing of exactly how Hibari could remove Mukuro's head from his body without ruining his school uniform or getting blood on the nice, clean floors.

Somehow he finds himself where he always finds himself, which is on the roof of the middle school, and he pouts because he isn't sure if he'll so easily have the roof to himself in high school. If he has to re-take over the high school reception room. If the high schoolers will appreciate his brand of discipline (not that he'll give them much choice). If the rumors are true and the seniors on the sports teams really are strong and tall enough to lift even Hibari up by one arm and demand his lunch money (to which Hibari expects to be able to say that he doesn't have any lunch money and promptly plant a foot in the goons' faces).

What pisses him off the most about high school was that he is starting over. Going into his first year of high school _almost_ bothers Hibari, but then again, there is the imminent thrill of whacking and beating and throttling and fighting his way through the ranks until he stands over not just the other first years, but the second and third years too, as head of the disciplinary committee, most feared presence in the entire town, and Overlord of the World According to Hibari Kyouya.

The tiny, tiny 0.000000002% chance that this will not happen is what is bothering him. And that tiny, tiny 0.000000002% is Rokudo Mukuro and the chance that he'll interfere. Because at that point Hibari will commit murder out of sheer annoyance and promptly get himself expelled.

Around lunch time, Hibari decides to go find himself a vending machine or something and then go somewhere that will take his mind off not just school, but Mukuro and the entirety of the stupid mafia too. After locating a vending machine and eating, however, the only place Hibari can think of with a sufficient amount of distracting shit in it is the amusement park just outside of town, and the thought of enduring crowds and crowds of screaming, sticky children makes him visibly twitch.

Hibari wonders idly if Mukuro has burnt his house down yet and makes his way home.

He doesn't announce it when he comes through the door because he's in the habit of not having to and simply doesn't remember to do so. He pulls off his shoes and hangs his tonfas by the door where he usually does and turns the corner into the kitchen. Mukuro has turned on the television that usually sits, dust-encrusted and perpetually unplugged, on the kitchen counter.

Hibari stares at the television show for a moment before turning to Mukuro, too exasperated to remember he hates the illusionist's guts, and says, "Game shows? _Really?_"

"They're funny. You should've seen the one that was on earlier, they had this one boy band answering questions and getting dropped in cold water-"

"We need to discuss something," Hibari blurts before he can decide against actually having a Talk About His Feelings On The Matter with Rokudo Mukuro.

Mukuro raises an eyebrow and flips off the television.

"I hate you," Hibari says, and realizes it's probably a really terrible way to start a conversation with someone you're being forced to live together with, but Hibari has never really been particularly good at being social.

"That's nothing new," Mukuro replies simply.

"Do you know why I hate you?" Hibari asks, his temper rising quickly at Mukuro's dismissive tone.

"Because you think I'm a hateful, sadistic, sarcastic prick and I'm the only person on the planet earth to ever have defeated you in battle," Mukuro replies. "Can I get back to my show now?"

Hibari takes a deep breath and restrains himself from strangling Mukuro, because that's exactly what he was about to say to the bastard, dammit, and Mukuro's an insufferable creep and how on earth did Sawada expect this to work and the world is turning red with anger-

Hibari punches Mukuro in the face and knocks him off his chair.

"I can't do this," he mutters to himself, stuffing his hands in his pockets in order to restrain himself. "I cannot live with you."

"Yeah?" Mukuro mutters indignantly from the floor. "Well, in case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly having a party over here either." He picks himself up, stands the chair up the correct way because it has fallen over in the process of Mukuro being knocked off of it, and stands there staring at Hibari. "I bet you can't guess why I hate you back."

"I don't care to guess," Hibari says, to make up for the fact that he hates guessing games, mostly because he always seems to guess wrong.

"Because I think you're a vengeful, impulsive, selfish asshole and you're the only person on the planet who I can't figure out."

Hibari lets that sink in for a minute. Vengeful makes sense; it's all he ever seems to be around Mukuro. Selfish… he supposes he probably can be sometimes. On days where he's in a particularly good mood, Kusakabe Tetsuya has shakily implied that maybe Hibari only tends to think about himself. Or at least pretends to only think about himself. Asshole? He's definitely been called that before. Mostly by Gokudera (he makes a mental note to remind Mukuro to return the Storm Guardian's pants to him). Impulsive?

Impulsive? Is he impulsive?

_Maybe sometimes_, he admits to himself. _In battle. But I don't really see it anywhere else._

Hibari wonders why he actually cares what Mukuro's just said to him.

_And what does he mean he can't figure me out?_

"Kyouya-kun," says Mukuro, snapping him back to reality. "Is there something on my face?"

Hibari inspects Mukuro's face. "No."

"Then why are you staring at me?" he asks, just a tiny lilt of teasing in his voice. _And he thinks _he_ can't understand _me?

"I wasn't staring at you," Hibari tries. Mukuro smiles nonchalantly, because he clearly doesn't believe Hibari's words.

"So now we've got our reasons for hating each other out in the open," he says, sitting back down and tossing the television remote between his hands, "Tell me what you _don't_ hate about me, Kyouya-kun."

"I hate everything about you," is the knee-jerk reaction Hibari supplies.

"You didn't say that earlier when you were listing off the reasons you hate me," Mukuro reminds him. "I'll go first then," he says, grinning. "I like how focused you can be, how determined." Hibari frowns. "I find it cute that you think nobody can read into your actions and words and see that you don't really hate us all, you just like to pretend it."

Hibari contemplates briefly going out into the hall to get his tonfas, and remembers he's in a kitchen and there are lots of perfectly good knives around.

"Also, when you're not scowling, you're very attractive."

Hibari blushes violently, lunges across the table and knocks Mukuro to the floor with every intention of tearing out the illusionist's vocal cords and using them to strangle him, despite the fact that he's taken biology class and knows very well that vocal cords aren't actually cords, but what's the human anatomy going to do to stop Hibari killing Mukuro for-

Huh. Maybe he is a bit impulsive.

And maybe the human anatomy _is_ going to do something to stop him, because tackling Mukuro to the ground has resulted in the pair of them in a very interesting position on the floor and suddenly Hibari is very glad his parents don't live with him because if anyone were to walk in and see him straddling Mukuro, see him pinning the other boy to the floor, Hibari would probably get himself sent to jail for life on mass murder charges because he'd kill whoever saw, and then he'd kill whoever _could've_ seen, and then he'd kill Mukuro just for good measure.

Hibari finds himself unable to tear out Mukuro's trachea with his teeth like he'd been planning to because upon rethinking this, he realizes it would mean his mouth on Mukuro's neck and he's no longer sure he wants to keep thinking, but brains have no off switch and so he _can't stop thinking it_. So instead he places one hand around Mukuro's neck and chokes him until the illusionist starts turning a nice purplish color. He releases Mukuro, with much coughing and gasping for breath from the other boy (Hibari is trying in vain not to remind himself that he's still straddling Mukuro).

"Kyouya-kun, that wasn't very nice," Mukuro manages through his coughs.

"Hn." And there is the noncommittal hn noise that Hibari makes when he isn't sure how to address something that's been said to him. Either he doesn't want to reply properly for some reason, or he disagrees with what's been said but not to the extent that he'll beat someone up for it, or he just _doesn't know what to make of it_.

"Um, you can get off me now," Mukuro reminds him, and Hibari does his best not to blush, and he accidentally makes the terrible mistake of glancing down at Mukuro-

Mukuro is blushing. The color of red that Mukuro is turning is almost as bright as the red of his right eye, which Hibari would find highly amusing if he weren't positive he were matching this blush exactly.

He stands up abruptly and moves to the other side of the room, not helping Mukuro up and conspicuously looking the other way.

"There are other things I like about you too, Kyouya-kun, but if you're going to react that way, I'm not sure I should say them."

"Hn." Because he doesn't know what to say to that.

"Why don't you tell me what you like about me?" Mukuro suggests awkwardly. Hibari peers over his shoulder at the illusionist, standing across the kitchen from him, still blushing. He's stuffed his hands in the pockets of some pair of skinny jeans Hibari's mother sent from America, pants Hibari would never be caught dead in but they look perfectly normal if not reasonably attractive on Mukuro-

Hibari allows himself to imagine the streets of Namimori bathed in the spilt blood of his foes as a method of calming him down and bringing his thoughts back to somewhere he's comfortable thinking.

"You're persistent," he says. Because if he just gets it out of the way now, he tells himself, Mukuro won't pester him about it anymore. "And confident." He turns around to face Mukuro. "And I like that face you make when you're genuinely surprised." Because it means Hibari has made it past the series of lies and illusions and defenses that Mukuro has set up around him, seen an actual emotion on the Mist Guardian's face, made him _react_.

Mukuro must be taken back by this comment because he makes exactly the surprised face that Hibari is referring to, his eyes widening and his lips pouting slightly and his eyebrows raised just enough that you can tell you've got his attention, and in his one normal blue eye, Hibari can see an emotion, albeit an unreadable one.

This isn't a face the illusionist makes often, or for very long at once, and he composes himself quickly and suddenly he's all smiles and falsities again and that pisses Hibari off a lot because what on earth could Mukuro possibly have to hide from the world?

"Kufufu, Kyouya-kun…" Mukuro says softly. "You caught me off-guard there."

No kidding.

"Are you trying to confuse me even more?"

No.

"I thought I told you I hated it that I couldn't understand you."

Hibari continues to say nothing, silently enjoying the fact that he's probably pissing Mukuro off right now.

Mukuro eventually realizes he's not getting an answer out of Hibari, and simply stands the chair upright again, sits down, and turns the television back on. The pair of them watches silently as a member of some boy band Hibari doesn't really care about gets dropped in freezing water. Neither of them laughs, but out of the corner of his eye, Hibari catches Mukuro grimacing at it in a way that suggests Mukuro is very glad it's them and not him.

Hibari wonders to himself why exactly he likes getting by Mukuro's defenses so much. When he can't figure it out, he leaves the room and punches a wall.

The rest of the day passes in a strange silence, mostly because Mukuro and Hibari are pretending the other doesn't exist and are avoiding each other at all costs. If Hibari is in the kitchen, Mukuro leaves the house to wander around the neighborhood. If Mukuro is on the second floor, Hibari retreats to the first.

Mukuro makes spaghetti for dinner, and Hibari glowers at him the entire meal because not only does Mukuro insist they eat together, he is obviously holding back laughter at Hibari's fervent attempts to use chopsticks instead of a fork. _What the bastard doesn't know,_ thinks Hibari, _is that the fork would be even worse of an attempt to watch._

After dinner, the phone rings. Hibari shoves Mukuro out of the way to answer it, because if it's an important call, there's no way he wants to deal with the embarrassing hassle of having to explain why the illusionist answered the phone with something along the lines of _Hibari/Rokudo residence, Mukuro speaking_.

It's Sawada Tsunayoshi, calling to check up on how the pair of them are doing. He sounds much more confident speaking to Hibari over the phone than he does in person. Hibari wonders idly how Sawada got his phone number and decides he doesn't actually care.

"So you're both still alive?" Sawada asks.

"No, I boiled him and ate him for dinner," Hibari says. Sawada makes a noise like a cat having its tail stepped on. "I'm kidding."

There is silence on the other end of the line.

And then, "Wow. I don't think I've ever heard you make a joke before, Hibari-san," Sawada says tentatively, as if Hibari can reach through the phone with his tonfas and bite him to death.

"Hn." Because he feels no need to answer. One good thing about being a high schooler: answering to a middle schooler can be below you if you want it to be. Hibari wants it to be.

"A-are you getting along with each other?" Sawada inquires.

"That depends," Hibari says, thinking of the multiple sharp and heavy objects he hasn't thrown at Mukuro today. He also thinks of the whole hate/like incident in the kitchen and wonders if Sawada can feel his murderous intent through the phone.

"Eh. Ah. Well, I'll see you tomorrow on the way to school, then. Since the middle school and high school buildings are next to each other. Yeah," Sawada stammers his way through a goodbye, somehow intimidated by Hibari despite the distance of several city blocks between them.

"Hn." Because Hibari isn't very good at goodbyes either. He hangs up on Sawada and wonders why, in fact, Mukuro is still alive.

Mukuro is in the kitchen with him when he turns around, and Hibari wonders how he got there without being noticed. But he's doing nothing incriminating and nothing annoying; he's just leaning up against the table and watching the sun set out the kitchen window.

"It's pretty, isn't it?" he whispers.

"What?"

"The sunset," Mukuro clarifies. "The color. All of it."

Hibari doesn't reply because he feels like Mukuro has probably just paused for a moment and hasn't actually finished his thought.

"I didn't get to see any of this in prison," he explains fully. "I mean, yes, I could see a lot of things through Chrome's eyes… but it's different in person. Clearer. More vibrant. It's a very different thing seeing you through her eyes and seeing you through my own, Kyouya-kun."

Hibari has absolutely no clue how to reply to this. It's not exactly your everyday conversation topic, after all.

"Do you know why I was in prison to begin with, Kyouya-kun?" Mukuro asks.

"Murder," Hibari guesses, shrugging. "Something like that."

"Well, yes," Mukuro admits. "Yes, I did kill people. But the first time I did it, I shouldn't have been put in prison."

Hibari raises an eyebrow.

"The first murders I ever committed were in the name of saving my own life and sanity. I like to believe that the murders I was imprisoned for were those I'd committed mind-controlling someone else." He pauses for a second, staring out the window. The fading orange light plays oddly across his mismatched eyes. "The first murders I ever committed, with my own hands, were in the name of my freedom."

Hibari doesn't say anything, for what is there to say? He doesn't know the past to which Mukuro is referring, and finds himself oddly curious.

"Tsunayoshi-kun knows, I believe, what I went through as a child at the hands of the mafia," Mukuro says softly, conspicuously not making eye contact with Hibari as he talks. "He didn't tell anyone, did he?"

"No," Hibari says, and he realizes oddly that he's only said about five words the entire conversation.

"I was a human experiment," Mukuro says softly, and there's the look in his eyes that Hibari loves, the look he has when all his defenses are down, when he's dropped his guard, and the emotion in his mismatched eyes right now is sadness, pain, regret. Hibari stares at Mukuro, his gaze completely captured by this brief moment where the illusionist isn't hiding.

"You look human to me," Hibari says blankly, because he sort of is impulsive after all and he probably should've just stayed silent.

Mukuro turns toward him and points at his red eye, currently devoid of numbers. "What, you thought this was natural?" he jokes, but Hibari can tell the humor he usually speaks with isn't actually there. "Do you think I did this to myself? Dragged myself through six levels of hell and forced those memories into a ten-year-old kid? I might have fun at other peoples' expense, I might be a sadist, but I'm not so twisted that I'd gouge out a kid's eye and force his mind to recall horrifying experiences from past lives. Kyouya-kun, _I know what it feels like to die already._"

And that's the biggest shocker of all. Not that Mukuro was experimented on, even though it makes Hibari sick to think about. Not that he's gone around using other people to murder entire mafia families out of revenge, because revenge is something Hibari understands. It's shocking to him to think that someone living knows what it feels like to be dead. Death is something Hibari isn't ready to face. It's why he makes himself strong, it's why he takes down anyone in his path. He doesn't want to die. The thought that someone alive knows what death feels like makes his head spin.

He says nothing. He simply stares Mukuro in his mismatched eyes for a moment and then strides slowly over to stand next to him and stares out at the last bits of the sunset creeping down past the horizon.

"This justifies nothing, you realize. I still owe you recompense for what you did to me," Hibari says, and his voice is softer, gentler than he intends for it to be. "I'm still going to bite you to death someday."

"I figured you might say that," Mukuro says melancholically, his eyes softening. The last of the light fades away and the pair of them is left standing in darkness. "But after being locked up alone for so much of my life, I'm glad someone cares enough to keep me in their thoughts, even if those thoughts are of murdering me."

Hibari is somewhat taken aback by this statement.

"Hn," he mutters and turns away. And then, "I'll get you a uniform at school tomorrow. Can't have you breaking dress code."

"Ever the disciplinarian, Kyouya-kun," Mukuro teases, and the humor is back in his tone and Hibari can imagine the playful look in Mukuro's eyes.

He turns back and punches Mukuro in the stomach, not hard enough to do any damage but just hard enough to hurt. "You know what I like about you, Rokudo Mukuro?" he whispers, almost angrily. "I like it when you've dropped your guard and there's no illusions anymore. Just you, what you're really feeling. I'm more comfortable with that."

Hibari leaves the room, not once looking back at Mukuro. He doesn't want to know what the illusionist's face looks like. If he's laughing at Hibari, if he's faking that he's okay. Because Hibari knows he's just done something shocking, just done something impulsive, just revealed a little bit of himself to Mukuro just like Mukuro did for him.

As Hibari gets ready to go to bed, thinking about high school and what a pain it'll be to have to force his way to the top again, he wonders exactly why Mukuro told him… well, everything. Why it mattered. Why he felt the need to.

Hibari falls asleep with the dreadful realization that the illusionist is going to be attending classes with him.

* * *

><p>Fridge Horror is apparently my specialty. I don't often put it in fanfictions, because I can't help but add a little comedy here and there, but it's all over the place in my original stories. Which, if I ever publish 'em, you folk will be among the first to know 3.<p>

If you're wondering where that tangent came from, Fridge Horror is what it is when you realize something nightmarish and disturbing about something long after it's happened. In this case, Mukuro states way back in chapter seventy (?) something that he's been reborn six times in all the different levels of hell or something, yes? And he remembers his lives in all these different incarnations, which is where his powers come from, right? Well, remembering all his past lives means he remembers how they died. That kept me up at night when I realized it. That horrifies me to no end. Seriously. And makes me feel really bad for Mukuro.

Review if you like. All reviews will be digitally fed into a quantum energy converter that I use to generate plot.

Cheers,

-Forte


	3. Adjustments

Howdy. I'm back.

I'm not completely sure I like this chapter all the time. I re-read it several times before uploading it after school today because I wasn't actually sure I approved of the various directions in which it went. But eventually I got over that (read: "Fuck this, I don't give a shit anymore, I'm gonna upload it anyway") and here you are.

Warnings: Shounen-ai, language

Disclaimer: I don't own shit, obviously.

Enjoy.

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><p>3: Adjustments<p>

It is far too early when Mukuro is awakened by Hibari stepping on his stomach and growling at him that they're both going to be late to the first day of school if Mukuro doesn't wake up and make something for breakfast. Mukuro mutters something along the lines of _pour yourself some goddamn_ _cereal_ and Hibari removes his foot and instead yanks Mukuro off the futon by the collar of his pajamas and demands to be cooked for.

"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed," Mukuro complains as a school uniform is forced roughly into his arms and the door to his bedroom slams with an angry growl from Hibari.

"Put that on and make me some food, herbivore, or I'll-"

"You'll bite me to death, right," Mukuro mumbles. Hibari must hear him, because he doesn't finish the statement.

Mukuro dresses in the Namimori High School uniform, which looks remarkably like the middle school uniform; black pants, white button-up top, blue vest. Mukuro thinks, as he looks in an illusionary mirror he's conjured himself, that it doesn't suit him quite as well as the Kokuyo uniform did, and wonders briefly how he'd look in Hibari's disciplinary committee jacket instead. He makes a mental note to borrow it later and find out, and vanishes the mirror away before heading downstairs.

"Sawada dropped those off," says Hibari as Mukuro enters the kitchen, gesturing to a pile of stuff on the table. It's school supplies, mostly; notebooks and pencils and erasers and a nice bag to put it all in. Mukuro makes another mental note to thank Tsunayoshi later.

"What do you want for breakfast?" Mukuro asks, pretending to be cordial. Hibari seems exactly the same as he always seems, which is generally pissed off at the world. In fact, he seems almost more… _distant_ than usual, and Mukuro wonders if he should've told Hibari so much the previous night after all. If the prefect really needed to know his whole hideous history. If it would really make any difference at all.

"Meat," he says. "And a cup of coffee."

"Coffee stunts your growth," Mukuro informs him, and as if to emphasize this point, he leans his elbow on Hibari's head and uses him as a human armrest. Hibari hisses at him like an angry cat, and Mukuro ruffles the prefect's hair, determined to be as much of a pain in the ass as he possibly can.

Hibari tries to get his hair to lie flat again, mostly to no avail, and Mukuro takes a package of frozen meatballs out of the freezer. He'd found a wonderful supermarket yesterday that sold all sorts of foreign food, and that included Italian foods, and he'd bought about eight different types of pasta, several kinds of bread, meatballs, canned tomato sauce, whatever he assumed he'd need to make pizza dough, about ten pounds of cheese, and more spices than he could count (if it smelled good, he bought it). All he knows how to cook (that doesn't involve a microwave oven and plastic, prewrapped packages) is Italian food. Hibari is just going to have to deal with it.

Mukuro cooks up the meatballs and puts them on a plate with some sauce for Hibari and deliberately hands him a fork along with it. Hibari glowers up at Mukuro and then down at the plate.

"They're safe to eat," Mukuro assures him.

"What are they?"

Mukuro thinks for a minute and attempts to read the packaging. He's heard of Engrish and witnessed Engrish, but this is pretty ridiculous. It's pretty hard to screw up Italian (at least in Mukuro's mind), but the entire thing is written in katakana and Mukuro, while able to speak perfectly normally, read kanji and hiragana perfectly normally, still has trouble with katakana. They boggle him to no end. One alphabet is plenty confusing enough, he thinks, especially when it has so many letters to begin with.

"Meat," he says finally. "I believe."

Apparently this is good enough for Hibari, because he eats it without any further questioning.

Meatballs for breakfast is a bit odd to Mukuro, but he eats some himself anyway because he can't find any cereal or pastries anywhere.

The two of them leave the house at the same time and Hibari says nothing to Mukuro as the illusionist follows him down the same path to school, despite the fact that there was apparently a rule set in place against that. Either Hibari doesn't actually care that people will see him showing up with Mukuro, or he's realized that the only people who already know Mukuro are the Vongola, and they won't make a big deal of anything other than the fact that Mukuro's there to begin with.

At the gate of the school they run into most of the famiglia, except for the lightning guardian who isn't old enough to attend school yet. Chrome makes a face that Mukuro isn't accustomed to seeing on her and actually hugs him, much to his awkward embarrassment. He can't figure out how to detach her, and Gokudera's laughing at him because he's completely flustered and blushing from embarrasment.

"Here's your pants back," Mukuro remembers suddenly, and pulls them out of his bag. Gokudera twitches and silently takes back the jeans. Tsuna says nothing. Yamamoto and Ryohei give Gokudera strange looks. Chrome finally releases her hold on Mukuro and allows herself to be dragged to the middle school's opening assembly.

Hibari and Mukuro are joined on their way over to the high school by the ever-enthusiastic, ever-extreme Sasagawa Ryohei, who immediately asks Mukuro if he likes boxing (no) and will he join the boxing club (also no).

The opening ceremony is boring and Mukuro doesn't pay attention through any of it. He scans the assembly hall, looking out over the entirety of Namimori high school. Ryohei is sitting somewhere else with another group of kids he must know, and Hibari, true to form, is at the very back of the room, not sitting but leaning up against the wall.

Aside from Hibari, nobody else manages to hold Mukuro's interest for very long.

It is by luck of the draw and beautiful serendipity that Mukuro and Hibari end up in the same class, although 'beautiful serendipity' is probably not quite the description Hibari has chosen (it's probably more something along the lines of 'karma coming back to bite him in the ass' if Mukuro had to guess). Class introductions pass by and Mukuro doesn't bother to try and remember anyone's name, because he'll forget them all anyway.

Hibari elects himself class representative by intimidating everyone else out of running for the position, and Mukuro realizes he finds it incredibly amusing when he's not on the receiving end of Hibari's sadism.

Mukuro thinks about how he's worded that in his head for a moment and then shakes his head, letting his hair fall in his face to hide his blush.

He eats lunch on the roof with Ryohei and a group of his friends from middle school for the sole reason that Hibari threatened to push him out a window if he came within twenty feet of him. The group of boys talks about nothing very interesting, because boxing and scantily clad women and more boxing are what this group of normal boys talks about, and as Mukuro runs a hand through his hair, which refuses to style itself any differently, remembers the illusion he's been keeping up all day so that everyone thinks he's got two blue eyes instead of a mismatched red one, Mukuro is very conscious of the fact that he's not exactly normal.

"So is that girl in the middle school your sister?" one of the boys asks him suddenly.

"Which one?" Mukuro inquires.

"She was talking to Sasagawa's little sister," the boy explains. "Short, hair like yours, wearing an eyepatch…"

"Oh," Mukuro replies, catches Ryohei paying a little closer attention to how the Mist Guardian is going to explain away the fact that without him, Dokuro Chrome would be missing most of her internal organs. "She and I are cousins," he lies easily. "We do look pretty similar, don't we?"

"You do," one of the other boys says, and the conversation devolves back into women and what the school uniforms are doing wrong in terms of panty shot potential, and Mukuro drifts into daydreamland.

The first day of school passes without a hitch, and Mukuro waits for Hibari at the front gate. Hibari raises an eyebrow upon seeing the illusionist there waiting for him, and Mukuro supplies some vague lie about not remembering the way home, despite the fact that he does. He notices Hibari taking conspicuous notice of the fact that Mukuro refers to Hibari's house as his own home, and not simply a place where he is temporarily taking up residence.

They walk home in silence.

Dinner is leftover spaghetti and whatever convenience store foodstuffs are left in the fridge, because Mukuro is determined to purge the household of any food that isn't homemade, but can't bring himself to throw it away if it's not past its expiration date and is still technically edible, so dinner is spaghetti and sushi rolls, and Hibari has a chance to smirk at Mukuro's failure with chopsticks.

Because he's never had a formal math class, geometry is completely beyond Mukuro in more ways than one, and he's also dead positive that x is not a number. He struggles valiantly with his homework for a while, pretending he understands it and re-reading the same three pages in the chapter he's been assigned to work from and eventually getting really fed up with it.

He makes his way to Hibari's room, where the prefect somehow manages to be done with his homework already, and is laying on his bed, reading the Namimori newspaper. Mukuro wonders briefly if Hibari has any hobbies other than beating up rule-breakers.

"Kyouya-kun."

"Out."

"What?"

"Get out of my room. You're not allowed in here," Hibari deadpans. Mukuro frowns and enters the room anyway, sitting down on the side of Hibari's bed. Hibari growls and Mukuro grins and holds up his math textbook.

"Wanna help me with this?" he asks.

"No."

"Great. Let's get started," Mukuro says, ignoring the contradictory answer and flipping back to the page he was attempting before.

"I said no, herbivore. Get out."

"How do you find x?" Mukuro asks defiantly. Hibari sits up and raises an eyebrow.

"Have you never had a math class or something?"

"Lifelong imprisonment of various forms, Kyouya-kun," he reminds Hibari. "They don't teach you much when you're bred in captivity."

Hibari is silent for a moment before yanking the textbook, paper and pencil out of Mukuro's hands. "It's easy, okay?" he explains, and gives Mukuro a vague tutorial on how to solve for x, which is apparently a variable and not a number, only it _is_ a number.

"How is x a number if it's a letter?" Mukuro asks indignantly.

"X represents something you don't know," Hibari sighs.

Mukuro contemplates this briefly.

"So," he says curiously, "if you use x in real life as something I don't know, then how Kyouya-kun feels about me equals x, right?" Hibari glares at him. "Or does it equal xxx?" Mukuro teases, tacking on his characteristic laugh at the end.

Hibari pushes him off the bed.

"I'm not doing your homework for you, herbivore. Get out," he growls angrily, returning to his newspaper. Mukuro smiles when he notices Hibari is blushing.

"You don't enjoy my company, Kyouya-kun?"

"I'm busy," Hibari states. "Out."

"I'll come back when you aren't busy, then," Mukuro decides, taking back his textbook and homework. He returns to his room and finishes the list of math problems much more easily, despite the fact that Hibari is terrible at explaining things.

Because despite everything, Mukuro would really like to know what x equals in terms of Hibari.

It is at about nine in the evening that it starts pouring rain, somewhat out of season, and about ten when the thunder and lightning start. The power goes out at ten-oh-two, shortly after which Hibari comes to visit Mukuro, who was asleep up until that point.

"What are you doing in here?" Mukuro asks, surprised that Hibari is within twenty feet of him of his own volition.

"The lights went out," Hibari explains. "I was reading."

"Not sleeping?" Mukuro yawns.

"Wasn't tired yet."

"Okay…" Mukuro tries. "So I could've sworn you disliked my presence entirely. What made you voluntarily come and seek me out?"

"Power's out," Hibari shrugs. "Which means the heat's shot."

Mukuro is half asleep and doesn't register the implications of this statement. "So?" he yawns. "Go get back under the covers and curl up with an extra blanket or something." Mukuro has no sympathy; the decrepit old Kokuyo building he'd been living in with Ken and Chikusa while he'd been trying to possess Tsuna was scheduled for demolition. Any heating systems that had once been in there were long since torn out. He was used to sleeping in the cold. Yes, it was awkward when it got just a bit _too_ cold and they'd had to sleep close together and share body heat-

Mukuro's eyes snap open and now he is fully awake and in full understanding of what exactly Hibari's doing in his room. He sits up and tries to read the look on Hibari's face in the vague glow from the streetlight outside, but it's hard to do because it's (and Mukuro can't help but think the phrase) a dark and stormy night and a lot of the glow is diffused by the rain.

There is a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder and for a split second, Mukuro can see the look on Hibari's face. It's not that he's cold. He's not afraid of the thunder, because it's Hibari and he really isn't afraid of anything. He's not angry, which means he's not here to trick Mukuro and kill him.

It's a look Mukuro knows well, because he's seen it in his own face before when he looked at his reflection as a child, when he imagined what his face must look like from the outside, of someone looking in at him in his tank in Vindicare.

Loneliness.

The solitary, independent Hibari, who hated crowds, generally hated people... he lived by himself, he was always pushing people away-

Mukuro stands up and gets out of bed. He follows Hibari back to his room in silence, watches out of the corner of his eye as Hibari climbs back into bed, knows he's making that startled face that Hibari says he likes when the prefect holds out a hand and beckons him over.

Mukuro cautiously steps forward and Hibari pulls him down onto the bed as soon as he's close enough, and now they're sitting next to each other-

Hibari whacks Mukuro upside the head with the book he must've been reading earlier and says, "You're an illusionist; make me a light source so I can finish this chapter."

Mukuro sighs. It's Hibari after all; what was he expecting? He resigns himself to being awake for a little while longer, and conjures up a fireball, which he lets float over Hibari's head while the prefect reads. After a while, Mukuro starts reading over Hibari's shoulder just to keep himself awake. There are some kanji he doesn't recognize, which might be the characters' names or something, and Mukuro doesn't want to ask Hibari what the kanji mean, because he'll either get blown off, or told to shut up, or worse, made to feel like he's stupid.

Hibari shuts his book and falls back on the bed, pulling the covers around himself. "You can go now," he says dismissively.

Mukuro ignores this request and, before he can chastise himself for being impulsive, before Hibari has time to react, Mukuro has slipped under the covers with him and wrapped his arms around Hibari's torso, pressing himself up against the prefect's back and burying his face in Hibari's dark hair.

"I'm cold," Mukuro explains blankly, and Hibari tries struggling for a moment before giving up. Mukuro wonders why, and then he feels Hibari relax in his arms and the prefect mumbles something unintelligible. "I can't hear you," Mukuro says softly.

"… I said you feel pretty warm to me," Hibari murmurs, suddenly very passive, and Mukuro's not sure quite what to do with a Hibari like this. He's used to dodging and blocking and teasing and fighting his way around the prefect; not quiet, calm (if not vaguely reluctant) acceptance.

Mukuro doesn't reply to this, because he assumes (or maybe he just hopes) Hibari has edited his original wording of the sentence to exclude the word 'hot' from his description of Mukuro's body temperature, and instead he snuggles up against Hibari, buries his face in the crook of his neck, and the pair of them falls asleep together.

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><p>D'awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww<p>

Okay. I'm done.

Review if you like. I don't care if you don't. But it'll help me live through this hideous English essay for long enough to write the next chapter if you do.

Cheers,

-Forte


	4. Assumption

Short chapter is short. But full of cute. And as is typical of my fanfictions, I have no idea where the hell this is going. I'm writing it for the most part in English class and the plot writes itself as I go. No plans. Oh well. Winging it is so much more fun anyway. I wing it on fanfics and I bullshit on essays, all within the same class period! WOOT.

E

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><p>4: Assumption<p>

Hibari wakes up early because before the power went out, he hadn't yet turned out the lamp, and so when the power came back on, so did the lights in the room, and Hibari is startled awake by a bright flash from his bedside table. He reaches over calmly and gives a harsh tug to the cord of the lamp, pulling it out of the wall and killing the bright glow that has awakened him. He thinks to himself that something about this morning feels a little bit off, and knows there's definitely something he ought to have remembered from yesterday. The last time this occurred, it was related to the herbivore whose existence was being forced on him by Sawada Tsunayoshi, and that herbivore is Rokudo Mukuro. The last time, he'd somehow managed to blank out on the fact that Mukuro was now living with him.

_Well_, Hibari reasons, _it's early morning and I don't technically have to wake up for another… half an hour or so. So I'll just curl up with Mukuro and go back to sleep._

…

_Something,_ he thinks, _is very strange about that sentence just now._

He closes his eyes, counts to ten, and reopens them. He tilts his head slightly to the right, and lo and behold, Rokudo Mukuro is in his bed.

Hibari doesn't remember approving this action. He doesn't really remember why it occurred in the first place, other than something to do with him being cold and not really wanting to get up to find his tonfas in the dark.

Hibari sighs and rolls onto his back with some difficulty, because Mukuro's arms are wrapped around his waist and his face is nuzzled into Hibari's neck. Eventually he manages, crossing his arms indignantly and staring up at the ceiling. It's boring up there, because all there is to look at is white paint and a lamp. Hibari rolls even further over and stares at Mukuro instead, because unlike the ceiling, at least Mukuro is color-variated and interesting to look at.

Mukuro is curled up quite naturally for a boy who is sleeping in another boy's arms, and Hibari wonders if he's used to it (and then he wonders hatefully why that prospect makes him mad to think about). Mukuro's silky hair is tickling his neck, and Hibari pushes it gently out of the way before he accidentally giggles or something, because he's Hibari Kyouya and he just doesn't do stuff like that.

Hibari wonders why he used the mental descriptor 'silky' to describe Mukuro's hair.

Mukuro shifts slightly in his sleep and his arms tighten around Hibari, pulling them closer together. Hibari tries not to think of all the places their bodies are touching, where they aren't touching, where he wishes they were-

Hibari mentally slams his foot on the brake pedal of his train of thought, because if he starts thinking that way, he'll have to get out of bed, and it's _warm_ and he doesn't want to do that just yet.

Then again, he doesn't want the thought of_ Mukuro_ touching him to be turning him on either, because at this point, Hibari is still pretty darn sure relationships, love, and sex are all things that happen to people other than him. This may be the reason why he deigned to hang around middle school for such a long time before forcibly subjecting himself to the high school hell of exactly those three things.

Hibari thinks about how he's going to work his way (violently) to the top of the high school disciplinary committee, and absentmindedly plays with Mukuro's hair.

"Kyouya-kun, that tickles," Mukuro mumbles. "Lemme sleep a little longer, okay?"

Hibari freezes. _Oh shit, I just woke him up,_ he thinks, dead horrified. He attempts to pretend to be asleep.

"I know you're awake, Kyouya-kun," Mukuro whispers. "Your breathing's different than it would be if you were sleeping."

"I hate you," is Hibari's reply.

Mukuro laughs softly. "Which is clearly why you're cuddling with me," he teases, tracing his fingers in lazy patterns across Hibari's back. Hibari feels a slight shiver run down his spine, and he's not entirely positive he can convince himself he dislikes this feeling, and so he acts on an impulse and slips his arms around Mukuro.

"Oya?"

"Go back to sleep," Hibari mumbles, resting his cheek on Mukuro's head. The illusionist's hair smells nice, he thinks, and he's positive he must be blushing and is glad Mukuro's line of vision won't allow him to see this.

"We have to get up soon anyway," Mukuro sighs.

"Hn."

"Kyouya-kun…" Mukuro starts, and then trails of as if he's unsure where he's actually going. "Do you really, actually _hate_ me?"

"Most of the time," Hibari admits, and wonders idly to himself what the hell he thinks of Mukuro when he isn't spending his time resenting the fact that there exists on this planet a person who at some point has defeated him and not been soundly thrashed in return.

Apparently Mukuro is wondering the exact same thing, and so he asks: "Well, what about when you don't hate me? What do you think of me then?"

Hibari doesn't answer. He has a sinking feeling that what he thinks of Mukuro the rest of the time has something to do with the fact that he's really enjoying (not that he'll ever admit it) how it feels to have Mukuro's arms around him like this.

Mukuro sighs. His breath is warm against Hibari's skin and he shivers again, letting one of his hands tangle itself once more in Mukuro's hair.

He yanks sharply and pulls Mukuro's head back so they're face to face. Mukuro looks startled. Hibari is sure he must be blushing.

"Go make breakfast, herbivore," he says simply, and gets out of bed reluctantly. "I'm going to take a shower."

"Yes, ma'am," Mukuro teases, grinning. Hibari growls and storms out of the room.

On the way to school, Hibari refuses to make eye contact with Mukuro, because that would mean acknowledging the illusionist's continued and persistent presence in his everyday life. Hibari would like to settle into this new high school routine as seamlessly and easily as he can; being followed to school by Rokudo Mukuro was not in the original plans for this new routine. He pretends he can't hear Mukuro humming to himself, pretends the Mist Guardian's footsteps on the concrete aren't audible just a mere foot to his left, pretends that Mukuro isn't following him to school because _goddamnit why can't he stop thinking about Mukuro?_

Hibari sleeps through first period, because the walk to school has really stressed him out that much.

Throughout the next few classes, when Hibari actually pays attention, he can feel Mukuro's eyes on him occasionally. But whenever he goes to look, he always seems to miss catching him in the act, and Mukuro is taking notes, or staring out the window, or some other absentminded thing.

At lunch, Mukuro follows Hibari to the high school reception room, where he takes on the temporary role of Parody Cheerleader and roots for Hibari as he beats up the entirety of the high school's disciplinary committee, one after another. He revels in the fact that he's gaining more power in the school, more confidence after each fight, but they're easy battles compared to the ones he knows he could be fighting with Mukuro.

Hibari wonders briefly, as he demands that everyone present kindly get their asses out of his new office, when he started thinking of it as fighting "with" Mukuro and not "against" him.

Mukuro doesn't leave the room immediately, stopping to place a bento box on the sofa next to Hibari. He smiles briefly, a real smile without any teasing or spite or falsity in it, and then he strides confidently out the door of the reception room, leaving Hibari on his own.

The bento box is full of pasta and cheese. Hibari can't help but laugh softly under his breath at Mukuro's complete eccentricity. He spends the rest of the day ditching class and enforcing discipline on the other fools ditching class (he wonders if anyone ever thinks he's a bit of a hypocrite for it), but for some reason he's just not in the mood to completely beat the living hell out of anyone and everyone he sees, leaving most of them with just enough bruises to go to the nurse's office and just too few to land them in the hospital.

For some reason, he's just in too good of a mood (although that tends to keep people out of trouble just as well as his bad moods, because when Hibari is in a good mood he walks around the school _grinning_). Hibari has an inexplicable feeling the mood has something to do with Mukuro, and wonders if the illusionist put something strange in his lunch.

Today, Hibari is the one waiting at the front gates for Mukuro at the end of the day.

On the way home from school, Mukuro is strangely quiet. Hibari pretends not to care, and as soon as Mukuro tells him what's on his mind, Hibari wonders how the hell it could've happened.

"So, Kyouya-kun… what do I do if some girl I don't really know asked me out earlier today?"

Hibari sighs.

"What in the world makes you think I have experience in this field?" he asks impatiently.

Mukuro doesn't reply to this question. "Should I go out with her?" he asks nervously.

"Who the hell would want to go out with _you_?" Hibari asks cynically. Mukuro looks vaguely hurt.

"I like to think there's someone out there for me somewhere," he says, shooting Hibari a glare.

The wind tosses their hair around a bit. Hibari shivers and slips his arms into the sleeves of his jacket, which usually just hangs off his shoulders and looks cool.

"Do you _want_ to go out with this girl?" Hibari resigns himself to fate and engages in the conversation with a sigh of exhaustion.

"No," Mukuro admits. "I don't know her at all. I can't even remember her name. And she seems sorta superficial."

"Then tell her you don't like her," Hibari says bluntly, crossing his arms.

"I don't want to be mean about it," Mukuro complains. "Since I think by saying I'd think about it she might think she's got a chance."

Hibari ponders this briefly.

"Tell her you've got a girlfriend already," he tries.

"She knows I don't. That was the first thing she asked me."

They walk on in silence for another moment before Hibari is hit with the hammer of inspiration.

"Tell her you're gay," Hibari suggests.

Mukuro blushes lightly and stuffs his hands in his pockets. "Coming out on the third day of school seems a bit rushed to me, Kyouya-kun," he replies calmly, but there's an odd lilt in his voice that Hibari's having trouble placing. He doesn't immediately reply to Mukuro's comment, until it sorta hits him that, hey, that funny little lilt in his voice? That was Mukuro's I'm-not-trying-to-be-comedic tone of voice. Hibari is completely unsure where to take the conversation from here.

And so he drags it in a different direction and says, "Don't bring any boyfriends home without permission, or I'll bite you to death."

At this, Mukuro seems to have reached an impasse. To Hibari, it looks rather like he is torn between laughter and embarrassment and confusion and maybe even being a little disappointed, and he can't choose which of these feelings to vocalize.

In the end, he smiles at Hibari and says, "You don't really need to worry about that, Kyouya-kun," and they walk the rest of the way home in awkward silence.

Hibari wonders whether or not he should be worried by that statement.

For dinner, Mukuro cooks something called pasta carbonara, which consists of noodles (Hibari is beginning to wonder if there are any Italian foods that _don't_ involve noodles) and cream sauce and a _lot_ of bacon.

Hibari loves it. Mukuro seems to love the fact that Hibari loves it.

Tonight, Hibari helps Mukuro with his homework again, because for some reason math just doesn't come easily to him. Science he gets completely, because in order to create realistic illusions, he needs to know the physics and chemistry behind them. English he gets because he already speaks fluent Italian and apparently some English too, so he's actually helping Hibari there (not that Hibari will ever admit to needing help on his homework). History isn't a big problem because the only homework there is reading. It's really just the math that's the issue.

And Mukuro won't stop making jokes about x.

Eventually Hibari has to go digging through a closet to retrieve his algebra 1 textbook from what must be two years ago now (he realizes offhandedly that this is the book he's seen Sawada taking to school with him). He rushes through the chapter reviews with Mukuro, vaguely aware of the fact that he's probably a terrible teacher if only for the reason that he gets very angry when mistakes are made or methods aren't understood. Mukuro suffers through anyway and eventually feels confident enough to attempt his homework on his own.

When Hibari next looks over, Mukuro has fallen asleep on the sofa, using his textbook as a makeshift pillow.

Hibari finishes his math homework for him, doing his best to copy Mukuro's handwriting. It only takes him a few minutes, and he wishes _his_ math homework could be this easy, instead of him struggling to even _pronounce_ "logarithms".

"Kyouya-kun?" Mukuro mumbles, and Hibari wonders if he's accidentally awakened him for the second time in one day. But as it turns out, Mukuro is just talking in his sleep.

Hibari stops.

Mukuro is saying Hibari's name in his sleep.

Mukuro is saying his name in his sleep?

Hibari resists the urge to wake Mukuro up, hit him, and demand to know what the hell he was dreaming about that involved Hibari. He decides he can ask Mukuro later if he remembers, but maybe he doesn't actually want to know.

Mukuro whines softly in a _really_ sexual-sounding way, and Hibari decides he sorta has to find out now or he's going to end up killing something in a really violent manner.

He goes up to bed with every intention of asking Mukuro if he had any good dreams the next morning.

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><p>Cute!Mukuro is cute. I can't help but love writing him like this.<p>

And allow me one brief moment of most-recent-chapter rant (if you haven't read it yet, spolier warning): HOLY SHIT Mukuro and Hibari were in the same room without killing each other 3 I'm in awe.

Review if you like. I don't care.

Cheers,

-Forte


	5. Affliction

I'm back. With a vengeance. Only not really. I just thought it sounded cool to say so.

I'm happy with this chapter, and at the same time, really really pissed off by it. And I can't figure out what about it's pissing me off so much (and it's not the ending, so don't say that). If someone can figure out what might be bothering me so much about it, please let me knowwww...

Enjoy~!

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><p>5: Affliction<p>

Mukuro wakes up on Hibari's sofa with the edge of his math book making an indent in his face and realizes he hasn't finished his homework. He scrambles around in a half-awake daze for a few moments before finding it on the arm of the sofa next to him with the last three problems finished for him in what is very obviously Hibari's handwriting. He smiles and organizes his stuff before noticing it's only forty-five minutes before they have to leave for school, and he rushes upstairs to get dressed. He scrambles back down and into the kitchen, hoping to god Hibari isn't up yet to murder him-

But of course Hibari is, and he's attempting and somehow failing to turn off the rice cooker, which has boiled over and is likely burning the rice inside it.

Mukuro laughs his trademark laugh and leans over to press the off button. Hibari turns slowly toward him with an embarrassed glare on his face.

"You were asleep so I tried to cook," he explains, despite the fact that no explanation is necessary.

"I can see that," Mukuro replies.

Breakfast is rice, leftover pasta warmed up in the microwave, and a nice healthy serving of Awkward as Mukuro tries to figure out what he's supposed to say to the girl (he still can't remember her name) who had the balls to ask him out yesterday. Even though, technically speaking, girls don't-

Mukuro sighs. He's doomed in some way, shape or form, he just knows it. He either has to tell her the truth and risk alienating most of the school (and attracting the immediate attention of all the rest, which are likely female), or he has to reject her outright and earn the immediate dislike of all the girls on campus, or, or, or what-

Or he could just tell her he likes someone else. Just so long as she doesn't ask _who_. That's it.

"So," Hibari asks on the way to school, and Mukuro is startled, because the only conversations Hibari's started with him have involved death threats, and he's curious to see where this one goes. "Did you have any good dreams last night?"

Mukuro pretends this question doesn't startle him and lies. "I don't remember if I dreamed about anything at all," he says.

"Bullshit," Hibari replies frankly.

"How do _you_ know if I had any dreams or not?"

"You talk in your sleep."

At this, Mukuro knows he's already done something self-incriminating, and he'd rather like to know what it is, but he figures just outright asking Hibari will result in either not being told, or the fact that he acknowledged the dreaming will encourage Hibari to keep asking.

"I do?" he says.

"You did," Hibari nods. "Or, more accurately, you _moan_ in your sleep."

Mukuro flushes a nice vermillion color and looks away. "Do not."

"You did."

"I didn't."

"Lies."

"You're an asshole."

"So says the rest of the world," Hibari sighs, looking slightly dejected. Mukuro suddenly feels like he may have offended Hibari and debates whether he should apologize for the comment, or decide that it's recompense for the half-teasing interrogation about his dream (Mukuro was previously unaware to the fact that Hibari _could_ tease).

They are silent for a little while longer, and they reach the school. Just as they are about to enter the classroom, Hibari grabs Mukuro by the front of his shirt and shoves him up against the wall (Mukuro tries desperately to remain calm and not have a nosebleed or something incriminating like that).

"If you don't tell me what kind of dream you had and how I was involved in it _and I know I was, Mukuro_… I'll lock you out of the house."

"You're kidding."

"Do I ever?" Hibari asks, and without further ado he lets go of Mukuro and strides purposefully through the classroom door.

At lunch break, the girl from yesterday makes a beeline for Mukuro's desk and he braces himself for impact.

"Did you think about it?" she asks in a sickly sweet voice. "I'd really like to go out with you, you know. You're really hot."

_And you're really superficial_, he thinks. _If you knew anything at all about me, you'd be running out the door in seconds._

"I'm really sorry," Mukuro sighs, doing his best to sound truly apologetic and hoping the chick buys it. "But I didn't want to tell you yesterday… there's someone else I like already. So if it's okay, I'll have to decline your offer-"

"What?" the girl squeals, and then beckons over her friends. Suddenly there is a crowd of squealing females around his desk. "Who is it?"

"What?" Mukuro is confused.

"Which of us is it, then? It's gotta be someone in our class, right?" the girl asks, crossing her arms indignantly. "Who do you like?"

"Um." Mukuro mentally flails around for an excuse. Yes, the person he 'likes' is in their class, but the second he says that, the girls will be all over him trying to figure out which of them it is, and that's absolutely the last thing Mukuro needs, because truth be told, it's _none of them_.

And despite all the confidence he has, Mukuro really doesn't want to take Hibari's suggestion from yesterday and tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

He goes over how it might play out in his head: _Well, _he'd say to the girls_, the person I like isn't any of you… _

_Who is it?_ They'd ask._ They're in our class, right?_

_Yes._

_But if it's none of us…_

And then Mukuro would tell them: _It's Hibari Kyouya-kun._

And one of two things would happen. In one case, all the girls will be angry at him for being gay and not able to date at least one of them or something, and then they'll tell all the boys, and all the boys will be creeped out by him (or worse, some of them might start hitting on him, and that's really not what he's aiming for). On the other hand, telling all the girls in the class that he likes Hibari Kyouya could earn him a sixteen-person entourage of squealing yaoi fans that will never leave him alone, and the crowd following him around will alienate Hibari, and the stupid girls won't realize their existence is ruining their only chance to see the boys someday get together.

"Isn't it more fun if it's a mystery?" Mukuro tries. This only makes the girls more insistent that he tell them which of them he likes, because no, they don't think mysteries are more fun. They want to know if they still have a chance with him or not.

Mukuro contemplates lying to them and saying he doesn't want to date anyone at the moment, but then not only will he feel like a hypocrite when he finally gets his hands on Hibari (both literally and figuratively), they won't trust him anymore and the power he has over them already simply by existing will be gone.

Mukuro decides to take the easy way out: "I'm not feeling well. I'm going to go see the school nurse," he lies, and sprints frantically from the room. He has no idea where the nurse's office actually is, not that he ever had any intention of going there, and he quickly finds himself in the reception room. Surprisingly Hibari isn't there. Several members of the disciplinary committee are, however, and Kusakabe Tetsuya informs Mukuro that Hibari went out to buy lunch, because Mukuro wasn't awake early enough to make any for him (or something along those lines. Kusakabe seems to find the entire situation with Mukuro and Hibari quite confounding).

Mukuro threatens them all out of the room with an illusionary gun and takes a seat on what has been formally dubbed Hibari's Couch and waits for the prefect to return.

When he does, he gives Mukuro a vague look before walking right past him and sitting down at the desk. Mukuro watches him out of the corner of his eye and as such, isn't startled at all when Hibari throws a package of convenience store onigiri at his head.

"What are you doing in here, herbivore?" Hibari asks, taking a bite of his lunch.

"I tried rejecting that girl and only made my life so much more chaotic." Hibari's lack of a reply to this seems to Mukuro as an indication to carry on with the story, so he does. "I told her there was someone else that I liked, and she rallied all the girls in our class to come interrogate me about which of them it was."

"Hn." Hibari smirks at him.

"I don't like any of them, for the record."

"Who is it then?" Hibari asks. Mukuro is caught slightly off-guard, and wonders if he's heard correctly.

"Who's what, Kyouya-kun?"

"Who _do_ you like?" Hibari clarifies impatiently, finishing off his lunch.

"That doesn't concern you-" Mukuro starts, and then corrects himself. "Well, actually it does. But that doesn't mean I'm going to tell you."

Mukuro suddenly wishes he'd kept his mouth shut about all this as Hibari gets up from his desk, pulls out a tonfa, and comes to stand in front of Mukuro.

"How exactly does it concern me?" he asks calmly.

"Never mind," Mukuro mumbles.

"Tell me."

"I said never mind."

"I don't like having to ask twice, Rokudo Mukuro."

"So don't ask at all."

"And I really don't like not getting answers when I want them supplied."

"So sue me."

"I have a better idea," Hibari says, and he grabs Mukuro by the arm and drags him out the door. Mukuro struggles in vain against Hibari as he's dragged down the hallways of the school and up the stairs to the roof, where Hibari locks the door behind them and finally lets go of Mukuro.

"What are you doing, Kyouya-kun?" Mukuro asks nervously, because of _all_ the things Hibari shouldn't have done, it was isolate them. Mukuro would end up doing something drastic eventually, and it would most likely end in BAD.

"Fight me," he says simply. "If you win, you get off free. If I win, you've got a choice: either tell me what that dream of yours was about, or tell me why your love life happens to concern me. Sound good?"

"Er-"

"No holds barred, Rokudo. I want a fair fight, full power. I'm going to bite you to death."

Mukuro refrains from making a sexual innuendo, and Hibari charges at him, tonfas at the ready and teeth bared, a faint smile twisted on his face.

Mukuro dodges the first blow and summons up his illusionary trident to block the rest as Hibari hacks ruthlessly at him, much faster and much more furious than the last time they fought Or maybe it's just the fact that Mukuro's still recuperating from something like a year in prison, and his reaction time's still off a bit, his sense of speed in battle's still down a bit.

They dodge around each other for a while, the metallic clang of steel on steel ringing through the air, and Mukuro is only dully aware of bells ringing in the distance, signaling the end of lunch period. They're officially ditching classes to beat the hell out of each other.

It isn't long before Mukuro's losing himself to the adrenaline, losing himself in the sight of a battle-crazed and ecstatic Hibari, pushed to the limits of his fighting skill for the first time in quite a while, losing himself just like Mukuro. It thrills him to see Hibari's blood, because _damn_, Hibari can pull off that tragic hero look well with the blood dripping down his skin, splattered on his clothes, staining his perfection and Mukuro loves knowing it's him making it happen that way.

And suddenly he's thrown to the ground, the wind knocked out of him and he's staring up at Hibari and there's a spiked tonfa pressed up against his neck. Hibari is smirking, there's blood smeared on his lower lip and he looks sort of psychotic, and they're both breathing heavily. Mukuro tries not to pay extra attention to the fact that Hibari is straddling him and pinning him to the floor, and it reminds him vaguely of that one instance in Hibari's kitchen when a rather similar thing happened, only with more raw anger and less mutual adrenaline.

"I win," Hibari says simply, and rolls easily off of Mukuro, tossing his tonfas to the side and laying out on his back to stare up at the clouds, a satisfied smile on his lips. "Pick your poison, Mukuro."

"You're not going to kill me?" Mukuro asks, catching his breath as he looks to his left, watching Hibari very carefully.

"Where would be the fun in that?" Hibari asks, yawning. "If I kill you, we can't fight like this anymore. Also," he adds, "then nobody's around to cook for me."

Mukuro contemplates this for a moment.

"So what you're saying is that you actually like having me around, then?" he asks.

"No," Hibari says, a little too quickly. "Why on earth would I like that?"

"Well, I cook for you, as you said," Mukuro says. "And also, when I'm around, your house is a little less lonely to go home to, isn't it?"

Hibari doesn't reply.

"You fight your way to the top, but where does that get you, Kyouya-kun?" he continues. "If you stand above the entire world, with everyone below you terrified to approach, isn't that sort of lonely?"

"Shut up," Hibari growls harshly. "I told you not to talk about things like that again."

"I'm right, aren't I?" Mukuro pushes on anyway. "You're all alone at the top of your little world, aren't you, Kyouya-kun?" he rolls onto his side to look at Hibari, who is glaring defiantly up at the clouds with his arms crossed. "It's sort of sad that way, don't you think? Being by yourself all the time, I mean. I know what that feels like; I was in prison, and that's exactly what prison's like. You're alone. All the time. No questions asked about whether you want to be or not."

Hibari glances over for the sole reason of shooting Mukuro a piercing glare.

Mukuro ignores this, because he knows he's getting somewhere and he'd really like to know what Hibari's feeling, because there's no way he's actually emotionless. Mukuro's seen him angry. Mukuro's seen him frustrated. Why can't he ever see the other things he _knows_ Hibari must be feeling?

And so even if it means pushing him until he truly wants to murder Mukuro, the questions are going to keep coming.

"Tell me, Kyouya-kun: are you lonely?"

"_Shut up._"

"Do you like it better when I'm around? Because then you're not on your own anymore?"

"I said shut it, herbivore!"

"Why do you push everyone away?" he asks.

Hibari doesn't answer. Mukuro stays silent and hopes he will.

Eventually Hibari sighs, and says quietly, "They're weakling herbivores and they can't keep up with me anyway."

Mukuro doesn't think Hibari's done talking, so he lays there, staring at the prefect, and lets him continue.

"What I want up here, as you say, at the top of my little world, is someone _strong_, someone… more like I am." He pauses and turns his head to the side a little, making eye contact with Mukuro. "But nobody like that exists," he finishes. "There's nobody."

Mukuro holds his gaze for a while, noticing a lot of foreign emotions in Hibari's eyes. And then Hibari shakes his head and his bangs fall in his face and Mukuro can't see through them to tell what the look in Hibari's eyes is anymore.

"Well," Mukuro says finally, "I guess that makes me nobody then."

Hibari lifts his head slightly and raises an eyebrow. "What do you mean by that?"

"You said there's nobody. I guess I'm nobody, then."

"Shut up, Mukuro," Hibari sighs. "Also, you still need to tell me something."

"Huh?"

"The dream or why your love life concerns me. Pick one and say it."

_But_, Mukuro thinks, _the problem is no matter which I say, I'm still going to be giving you the same message. There's no right answer here._

"I'm waiting, herbivore."

Mukuro could lie. He could tell a blatant lie, but Hibari is Hibari and he'd probably see right through it so he can't. And besides, he doesn't _want_ to have to lie.

Someone starts banging on the door to the school roof. Hibari sits up to look through the smallish glass windowpane on the door. It's Kusakabe Tetsuya, so Mukuro can breathe a sigh of relief because Hibari leaves him for a moment to open the door for his second in command.

"There's some punks from another school district beating up the kendo team," Kusakabe explains. "You're going to have to go deal with it."

Hibari nods and looks back over his shoulder at Mukuro, who is still sprawled out on the rooftop. "You're telling me everything later," he insists. Mukuro gives him a vague smile and watches him as he vanishes through the doorway, his black coat fluttering in the breeze behind him.

Kusakabe gives Mukuro an odd look. "What were you two doing up here?" he asks, his tone of voice revealing that maybe he doesn't want to know after all.

"Trying to kill each other," Mukuro explains easily. They were. They did. And then somehow, Hibari decided not to.

Kusakabe leaves, and Mukuro decides he's going to ditch the rest of the day, partially to avoid the girls, and partially to avoid Hibari, and partially because he just needs some silence and a nice place to think that isn't splattered with blood.

Despite the fact that he's avoiding answering Hibari's questions, Mukuro still intends to wait for him at the gates so they can walk home together, so he doesn't stray too far from the school and instead goes to bother Tsuna and the other middle schoolers. Unfortunately, they're all in class, and unless Mukuro wants to deal with detention (which, knowing his luck, will probably be monitored by the disciplinary committee), he can't go and mess with Tsuna. He can't even figure out what classroom Chrome's in, but he suspects he's looking on the wrong floors or something. He ends up wandering around campus for a while, driving himself insane over his conflict on exactly how to explain this to Hibari.

Mukuro takes note of the look of surprise on Hibari's face when he sees Mukuro at the gates of the school waiting for him. Mukuro pretends nothing is wrong and they leave in silence.

They're about halfway home before Hibari figures they're far enough away from the school and nobody's around to see him speaking with Mukuro. "Alright, spill it."

"Spill what?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about," Hibari says. "Do I have to torture it out of you? Because if it's you, I'm not above doing so."

"Nice to know you care, Kyouya-kun."

Hibari sulks briefly. Mukuro finds it cute.

"Mukuro, I'm going to go insane."

"You're already sort of insane," Mukuro notes, "What with the killing people indiscriminately just because they're _crowding_, and the violence all the time, and-"

"By insane, I meant that I'm eventually going to end up saying please or something," Hibari grumbles. Mukuro stifles a laugh.

"I'd like to see that," he says.

"All right," Hibari concedes, and steps in front of Mukuro in the road. He crosses his arms, looks directly into the illusionist's eyes, pouts slightly (_cuuuuute_, thinks Mukuro), and says, "Mukuro, please tell me already."

Mukuro finds this too cute to refuse, and before he knows what he's doing he's said it:

"The reason my love life concerns you is because I kinda sorta maybe think I have a bit of a- er, no, a _lot_ of a… sorta… a, um… I like you," he spits out eventually. "Like, _like_ like you. You know." Mukuro is suddenly very aware of the fact that he's blushing, and very aware of Hibari's eyes on his, and _painfully, painfully_ aware of the horrible awkward silence blooming between the two of them.

Hibari says nothing. He stares, wide-eyed at Mukuro with a look of complete shock on his face.

_Oh, shit_, thinks Mukuro. _Oh, no._

And because he doesn't know what else to do at that point, he steps back from Hibari very carefully, not breaking eye contact as he backs away, and then, biting his lip and tightening his hands into fists, Mukuro turns and runs off in the other direction, not caring where he goes or how lost he gets, just so long as he doesn't have to face Hibari like this, when Hibari clearly has nothing more to say to him.

"Wait, Mukuro-" he thinks he hears behind him as he disappears around a corner, but he's pretty sure it's just his wishful thinking in the end. What was he ever thinking? Hibari Kyouya? Love him back? _Maybe when hell freezes over,_ Mukuro thinks bitterly, and he keeps on running and doesn't look back.

* * *

><p>Oh, Mukuro, if you'd only stuck around like... 15 more seconds...<p>

Also, woah, this is the first time I'm ending a chapter in the middle of the day instead of just making each chapter one day long. But I realllllly need the next scene to be narrated by Hibari, so I have to make it a new chapter otherwise the flow gets all broken up in my head and my minor OCDs scream at me from the back of my mind until I fix it.

Review if you like. It'll keep me sane this week. I had to spend three fucking hours folding little tiny origami lotus flowers today for a stop-motion animation film (read: the most freakin' tedious art form on the planet that must exist solely for the purpose of making me insane) and it'll really boost my morale. And, you know, firmly ground me in reality. That too.

Cheers,

-Forte


	6. Attraction

Ahahahahaha I'm totally in school right now... which is honestly where I end up doing most of my writing, but I'm seriously surprised I didn't get caught not doing my work this time... I was totally smirking the entire second half of this chapter.

Enjoy~!

* * *

><p>6: Attraction<p>

Hibari is shocked to the point where he cannot move for the next two minutes or so, which gives Mukuro plenty of time to vanish, and the second Hibari regains the ability to think in full sentences and actually move from where he's frozen on the sidewalk, he is immediately very angry with himself. If he'd said something, Mukuro wouldn't have run off. Come to think of it, why the hell _did_ he run off? Did he take Hibari's silence as a rejection? Even so, running away from a problem wasn't generally a Mukuro sort of a thing to do, so maybe he thought he was about to get beaten up or something.

_When I find him_, Hibari thinks… and he doesn't really know what to think after that, because the problem of finding Mukuro to begin with comes first, and this is a task far easier said than done, because Mukuro's an illusionist, and he can use his illusions to hide if he so pleases.

Hibari curses under his breath. _Why why why_ did he have to freeze up like that? Yes, it was a shocking revelation, to find out that Mukuro… well, had a thing for him. Yes, it startled him. But… but…

Running through the streets of Namimori, looking for Mukuro, Hibari suddenly feels very, very alone.

"Hibari-san?"

Hibari skids to a stop and turns toward the voice that's called his name. It's Sawada, walking home from school with Chrome Dokuro and Sasagawa and his little sister. Hibari growls at them, because he's very angry, and starts to leave, but Chrome is perceptive and fast and as such, catches him by the sleeve of his shirt before he can go.

"You've got a strange look on your face," she points out, and Sasagawa's sister hands her a pocket mirror, which she holds up to Hibari.

Of course, as is expected, he looks absolutely furious. But underneath that fury (and not very far underneath it either) is… something Hibari previously was unable to name. Something that didn't make sense to him. Something he's never felt before, because he's never been able to tolerate the presence of any other human beings for very long before getting angry and hurting them.

Hibari _wants_ someone. He wants someone to be with him, to stay and… to just _be_ with him. That's just that. Hibari watches his reflection in the mirror as he slowly turns redder and redder with anger and embarrassment and even a touch of shyness at the concept of wanting someone's company, and he turns to Sawada (partially to avoid the reflection and partially because he's got a question) and says, "Where's Mukuro?"

"I thought he was living with you," Sawada reminds him. As if he could forget.

"Yeah, well, he's gone… somewhere. Did you see him?"

"No," they all reply. Hibari grits his teeth and tries not to growl or threaten them.

"If you see that utterly moronic excuse for a human being, tell him I-" Hibari pauses and debates whether he's actually about to say what he thinks he's about to say. "Tell him… I want to see him."

Sawada and Sasagawa and Chrome share a look that says they believe they're about to be short one Guardian, but Sasagawa Kyoko smiles, because she always does, but Hibari can see something in it that he wishes he couldn't, and what he sees is understanding. This normal, uninvolved girl… can _tell_ that he doesn't want to see Mukuro to kill him. Yes, what he wants to do to Mukuro is in fact a four –letter-word beginning with K-I and ending with a double consonant, but the double consonant is a pair of S's.

Technically speaking, there's another four-letter-word that Hibari might at some point like to do to Mukuro, but he really hopes Sasagawa Kyoko hasn't noticed that one yet.

"Sure, Hibari-san," Sawada says finally. "If I see him, I'll tell him you said that."

And then Hibari does something that surprises all of them, himself included: he puts a hand on top of Sawada's head, frizzes his hair slightly (as if it's not messy enough already), and says "Thank you."

And he runs off, leaving a very shocked group of Vongola Guardians behind him.

The first place Hibari looks is back at the school, but the disciplinary committee is still lingering around there in pieces, looking for anyone staying late and breaking rules, and they haven't seen Mukuro, so Hibari leaves and goes to look around downtown for a while before realizing that Mukuro doesn't know yet how to get downtown. He looks at the park, but the park is full of screaming little children playing around after school, and Mukuro is nowhere in sight anyway. He eventually ends up wandering through the streets of Namimori, and it's very, very late when he wonders to himself if maybe Mukuro went home after all, and he starts heading back rather dejectedly and rather angrily.

As he's crossing a bridge on the way home, he notices someone sitting at the edge of the artificial riverbank below. At first he thinks nothing of them and continues along his way, but then he does a double-take as he realizes that it's _Mukuro_.

Hibari stops on the bridge for a moment so he can calm down and quit contemplating pushing Mukuro into the river for being such a moron.

Once he's calmed himself down a bit, he makes his way down to where Mukuro's sitting, staring out at the sunset's reflection on the water with a melancholy look in his eyes.

Hibari pulls out a tonfa and whacks Mukuro soundly on the back of the head as a means of greeting, and then drops down onto the grass next to Mukuro and grabs him by the front of his school uniform.

"What the hell was that?" Mukuro complains. He's about to say more, but Hibari cuts him off.

"That's _my_ line. What the hell was with _you_ running off like that?"

Mukuro blinks slowly and Hibari lets go of his shirt in favor of whacking him with his tonfa again. Mukuro scowls at him and then wipes at his eyes as if he's been crying or something. Maybe he has.

"I left because… well… because… I thought you were mad," he explains. Hibari moves to hit him with the tonfa again, but Mukuro rather literally beats him to the punch and lands a hit right on Hibari's jaw, knocking him to the side. "You're being a jerk now, Kyouya-kun."

"You really want to turn this into a fight?" Hibari sighs. "Because remarkably enough, that isn't why I spent my entire afternoon searching for you."

Mukuro turns to stare at Hibari. "You _did_?"

"Yes," Hibari growls. "And I'm exhausted and angry and goddamnit, I can't believe you wouldn't have the patience to deal with me being _startled_!" Hibari drops his tonfa and punches Mukuro in the stomach, but it wasn't meant to hurt him. Hibari twists his hand around and grabs onto Mukuro's shirt, and he pulls Mukuro forward with a quick tug, dragging him towards himself. Mukuro immediately assumes the prefect is going to do something violent to him and tries to pull away, but Hibari grabs him by the arms and yanks just hard enough to pull the illusionist into his lap, and allows himself to topple over backwards, pulling Mukuro down on top of him. To make sure Mukuro can't get away, Hibari wraps one arm around Mukuro's waist and places a hand on the back of his head, pulling him in as close as he can.

"K-Kyouya-kun…" Mukuro whispers.

"You just _don't get it_," Hibari growls, twisting his fingers into Mukuro's hair. "You just don't get it at all, do you?"

"I don't get what?" Mukuro asks, and Hibari takes a moment to feel Mukuro's heart beating rapidly against his own before he flips them over easily so he's balanced above Mukuro, the illusionist sprawled out on the grass beneath him with a sad, half-confused look on his face.

Hibari says nothing. He simply grabs Mukuro by the front of his shirt and pulls him up so their faces are hardly centimeters apart, and then he closes the distance quickly, lets his eyes slip shut, and-

"Ow, Kyouya-kun! Don't bite!"

Hibari ignores this command and instead bites down harder on Mukuro's lower lip with the intent of drawing blood. When he manages to finally break the skin, Mukuro whines in pain and his hands come up to clutch at Hibari's jacket. Hibari laps up the blood, letting his teeth drag along the cuts he's made in Mukuro's lip. Mukuro does his best to choke back a moan (whether it's a moan of pain or pleasure, Hibari isn't sure. He also isn't sure he _cares_). When he's done with this, he lets go of Mukuro and sits up straight, straddling the illusionist. Mukuro pushes himself up off the ground and half-glares at Hibari, who's sitting on his lap.

"Kyouya-kun…" Mukuro starts, but Hibari holds up a finger to stop him.

"Don't speak," he commands, and then he leans forward and closes the gap between them again, and this time it's not to hurt Mukuro but to kiss him, kiss him in an unbelievably gentle way for Hibari. At first it's just the slightest brush of lips, breath mingling between them and Mukuro's eyes wide, his expression somewhere between shock and wonder. And then Hibari presses a little harder, just barely, gently moving his mouth on Mukuro's, and it's soft and almost comforting, if it weren't for the fact that the bitemarks on Mukuro's lip are still stinging as they kiss slowly, unsurely-

Mukuro pulls away first, with a whispered "Why…?"

Hibari crosses his arms and looks away with an embarrassed pout and says, almost inaudibly, "I was lonely."

Mukuro closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before leaning forward and wrapping his arms around Hibari's waist.

Hibari sighs and pushes Mukuro off him, lifts himself off the illusionist's lap and starts to walk away.

"If you don't come home with me, I'm going to drag you by your hair," Hibari threatens. He isn't sure if he'd actually go through with it or not.

Mukuro is up off the grass in seconds and at Hibari's side with his usual smirk returned to his face. He slips his hand into Hibari's as they start home, and Hibari figures he can let it slide this time because it's dark and the sun's just set, and as long as they don't walk under the streetlights, nobody will know.

But of course someone's invariably gonna find out anyway, because karma is a bitch, and over the years of beating up innocents, Hibari's earned a lot of bad points in that direction.

"Hibari-san! You found Mukuro!"

Sawada freakin' Tsunayoshi.

"We were out looking for him for you," Sawada explains. It's him and Chrome and Gokudera Hayato (who looks like he'd rather be elsewhere, but Sawada probably asked nicely enough that he came anyway) and they approach Hibari and Mukuro from down the street.

"You employed the help of other people to find me?" Mukuro asks gleefully, halfway between teasing Hibari and complete amazement at the fact.

"Shut up," Hibari hisses.

"I guess you found each other then," Chrome says, smiling. And then her eyes –thankfully only hers – happen to glance down and notice Mukuro and Hibari are holding hands, and her eyebrows raise. Because Chrome wears an eyepatch, Hibari can't tell if she's winking at them or not.

"Sawada, go home already," Hibari sighs. "Or I'll have to bite you to death."

Sawada blanches and runs off in the other direction. Chrome skips merrily off down some street. Gokudera follows Sawada away, giving Hibari the Finger as he leaves.

"Did you really have to threaten them?" Mukuro asks as they continue home. "They were going out of their way for you, after all."

"If I didn't, they'd have never let us be," Hibari says, shrugging.

It's getting rather late by the time they make it home, and they manage to do their homework during dinner without getting distracted (it isn't an easy task). Mukuro slams his textbook shut loudly on purpose when he's done, startling Hibari.

"Okay. That's it," he says, standing up and walking around to the other side of the kitchen table. Hibari raises an eyebrow as Mukuro drags him out of his chair and pushes him up against the wall behind them. There's a glint in Mukuro's mismatched eyes and a teasing smirk on his lips and then he's kissing Hibari, kissing him forcefully and hungrily and _oh my god_, Hibari thinks dizzily to himself, _If I hadn't frozen up earlier, my afternoon would've been _this_ instead- _

And then Mukuro's forcing his tongue into Hibari's mouth and his train of thought not only grinds to a halt, it tips over sideways and falls off the tracks and all he can think about is Mukuro, Mukuro's lips and _good god, _that's unfair what he's doing with his tongue…

It isn't long before Hibari's fighting back, his own tongue pushing back against Mukuro's and invading the illusionist's mouth, and Mukuro whines, startled, as Hibari starts unbuttoning his school uniform shirt. He lets his hands slide in between the folds of fabric, running them up and down Mukuro's skin as they kiss heatedly, near-violently. Mukuro pulls back for a moment to catch his breath, and Hibari takes that chance to latch onto the illusionist's neck, sucking and kissing and biting –biting _hard_, too – and taking immense pleasure in the sudden rush of adrenaline when he tastes Mukuro's blood, hears him moaning (_Definitely in pleasure,_ Hibari decides), and somehow they're no longer standing and Mukuro's on the kitchen floor beneath him as Hibari leaves bitemarks along his neck and chest. Mukuro's hand is tangled in his hair, and the other is up his shirt and _doesn't that feel nice_-

"Ah, K-Kyouya-kun… we should c-close the window …o-or your neighbors will hear us," Mukuro gasps. Hibari ignores this completely and decides to shut Mukuro up, capturing his lips in a burning, bloody kiss.

They break apart again, both of them gasping for breath and blushing madly. Mukuro lifts a hand up to his neck, covered in bitemarks, and winces slightly. Hibari feels like he should apologize, but he knows Mukuro liked it, so he doesn't.

"Can we take this somewhere a little more comfortable than the kitchen floor?" Mukuro asks. "Like, say, your bed," he suggests.

"Worst pickup line ever," Hibari drawls, lifting himself reluctantly up off of Mukuro and then dragging the illusionist up with him.

"But it worked." Mukuro grins and takes the lead, pulling Hibari up the stairs and down the hall and pretty much tackling him onto the bed in Hibari's room, and then he yanks Hibari's wrists up above his head and unbuttons his shirt and starts kissing his way down the prefect's body.

"Muku- ahh…" Hibari has been trying very hard not to moan, but Mukuro's not making it easy on him as he kisses further and further down and _oh, hell, there's no stopping now,_ he thinks.

But then, does he even want to stop?

Mukuro reaches down with one hand to unbutton Hibari's pants and then the stupid telephone just has to go and ring _right then,_ doesn't it? Hibari glances over at the phone on his bedside table to check the caller ID. It's Sawada, so he'd better answer it sooner rather than later, otherwise the pathetic little herbivore is going to keep redialing and redialing all night long until Hibari picks up the phone and indulges him.

Hibari reluctantly shoves Mukuro off of him ("Aww, we were just getting to the good part, Kyouya-kun~") and picks up the phone. "What do you want, Sawada?" he growls angrily into the receiver, doing his best to convey exactly how furious he is with the little brat.

"Um." Sawada doesn't sound nearly as terrified as Hibari thinks he should. "Um, there's, um, a problem. Um. Reborn says there's someone trying to assassinate all the Vongola Guardians. So, um, you and Mukuro should be careful, okay? And, um, lock the doors. Close the windows. Make sure you're safe and everything- Reborn, why do I need to tell all this to Hibari-san?" he says, directing that final complaint to the baby. In the background, Hibari can hear Reborn replying to Sawada with something along the lines of "you're the boss and it's your job".

"I can take care of myself, Sawada," Hibari grinds out. "I'm hanging up on you now."

"Just thought you should know, in case someone tries to kill you. Um, you have permission to fight back. And to kill them if the need be. Because then they can't come after the rest of us," Sawada adds.

_If you don't hang up the phone right now, Sawada, I'm going to come kill you instead_, Hibari thinks.

"See you tomorrow, Hibari-san," Sawada finishes, and Hibari growls intimidatingly at him and hangs up the phone, slamming it down onto the bedside table.

"Kyouya-kun?" Mukuro asks, gesturing at the phone.

"Some stupid mafia assassin is coming after Sawada's guardians and he felt the need to tell us to be _careful_," Hibari scoffs. And then he says, "Well, what're you waiting for? Finish what you started, herbivore, or I'll bite you to death."

Mukuro smirks. "You know I'd enjoy it if you did."

"Masochist."

"Sadist."

"So are you."

"True," Mukuro says, and pulls Hibari back down.

...

The next morning Mukuro shows up confidently (if not occasionally wincing in pain) to school with bandages around his neck to hide the bitemarks (there isn't a ton he can do about the ones on his lips, so he doesn't try). He's immediately accosted by the entire female population of his class, and they freeze in the action of asking him who he likes in favor of asking why he's covered in bandages.

"Who did this to you?" one of them squeals.

Mukuro laughs his signature laugh as he realizes he could have a lot of fun with this conversation. "Oh, it was Kyouya-kun," he explains.

"Eeeeeh," all the girls squeal. "You got in a fight with the head prefect and lived? You must be amazing!"

"It wasn't quite fighting…" Mukuro admits. At that point, Hibari walks into the classroom and sits down at his desk. Similar to Mukuro, he looks like he's just had a bad run-in with a cheese grater.

"Wow, look at that," says one of the girls.

"It must've been some fight," says another.

"It wasn't a fight," Mukuro mumbles under his breath.

"What happened to your lip?" asks one of the girls, gesturing to the bitemark. "It looks like you got bitten.

"I did," Mukuro smirks. "That was Kyouya-kun's doing too."

Several of the girls start chattering about how mean that is, and how Hibari would really do anything in a fight to defeat his opponents, and all sorts of other things. The few who aren't saying this are off to the sides, blushing crimson and trying not to make eye contact with Mukuro. He has to laugh at this.

"I did fight back, though, you understand," Mukuro adds, almost as an afterthought. "But in the end, I think Kyouya-kun may have won…"

The girls who were chattering start congratulating Mukuro on surviving. The ones who are blushing stifle squeals and blush even more brilliantly.

Mukuro sits back in his chair and laughs.

At lunch break, Hibari gets up with a glare on his face and proceeds to drag Mukuro from the room with not a single indication to anyone else as to why.

Mukuro, taking every opportunity to tease the hell out of the girls, says, "Oh, looks like it's time for round two!"

"Shut up," Hibari growls. As they leave the room and the squealing within it, Hibari lets go of Mukuro's shirt in favor of letting the illusionist walk on his own, and Mukuro drapes his arm around Hibari's shoulder cordially.

"Kyouya-kun didn't want to eat lunch by himself, huh?" Mukuro teases.

"I thought I said shut up," Hibari mutters, glaring off to the side, but despite this he loops his arm around Mukuro's waist anyway and they walk in tandem up to the school roof, content, together, and most likely going to end up trying to kill each other in ten minutes, but they're both fine with that just so long as they're both strong enough that they'll never actually succeed in doing so.

...

OMAKE : Attitude

"So if I'm up here at the top of my little world," Hibari says over lunch, "Then I'm the king of my world, yes?"

"Sure, why not," Mukuro agrees.

"So by that reasoning," he continues, pointing a chopstick at Mukuro, "Doesn't that make you the queen?"

Mukuro blushes and whacks Hibari over the head with a water bottle. "Hell no."

"Alright, princess then," Hibari suggests.

"At least say prince," Mukuro complains. "I'm a boy."

"I'm well aware of _that_, Mukuro." Hibari smirks and spears a meatball with his chopsticks (Mukuro has yet to make anything other than Italian foods yet, mostly because he doesn't know how).

"I think _I'm _the king," Mukuro says. "You're the princess and you were married off to me by your kingdom for political purposes, and now I'm in control of your country." Hibari gives him a Look. "Don't worry, Kyouya-kun. I'll protect you from foreign invasions… kufufufu…"

"Pervert," Hibari says bluntly.

Mukuro smiles and kisses Hibari on the cheek, earning himself a tonfa to the head.

"Not at school, herbivore."

"Aww, you don't mean that."

"I do."

"Like hell." Mukuro leans over and presses their lips together lightly.

Standing in the doorway that opens up to the school rooftop, Kusakabe Tetsuya decides that he's interrupting something private and he ought to turn around and go. Hibari can wait to hear about the kendo team getting beaten up again.

It's just nice for him to know that Kyo-san finally has someone he doesn't mind keeping him company.

* * *

><p>Hahaha Kusakabe Tetsuya is actually one of my favorite non-mafia characters.<p>

I feel like Hibari and Mukuro kept fluctuating between being in-character and being just OOC enough that you can tell they're OOC, and that sorta pissed me off, but when I tried to fix it it interrupted the flow of the story and the OOC turned into OCD and it all went downhill from there so I left it as it was to begin with.

This is the last chapter, by the way, unless I decide to grace you with another Omake (Chapter 6.5, which would contain the rest of the scene that's supposed to go before it switches to Mukuro's narrative toward the end. The only reason it'd be an omake and not an actual part of the chapter is because I can't write smut, and so half of it would be futile attempts to get past the making-out stage in the scene and half of it would be author's notes cutting in every few sentences with stuff like [What the helllll I can't do it I'm laughing too hard...].)So yeah. I fail. But I fail in a way that entertains my readers (or at least I like to think it does).

Also, this is the first fanfiction I've finished since that one Naruto one I deleted two years ago~! I'm so proud of myself.

Review if you like. But it's not gonna make me update any faster, 'cos the story's over.

Cheers, and thanks for sticking with it!

-Forte


End file.
